A new report, which also includes information about traffic fatalities, could lead more companies to be transparent about sexual violence.
WASHINGTON — In an unprecedented move for a public company, or any business, Uber released data on Thursday revealing the number of incidents of sexual assault reported by riders and drivers on its ride-sharing platform in 2017 and 2018.
Indeed, riders are likely safer in an Uber than at home or at school ― about 80% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, according to widely cited statistics from the Department of Justice. Story continuesHowever, just how much responsibility Uber has to drivers, and how much legal liability it bears for their actions, is something the company is currently fighting over, arguing that its drivers should be considered contractors, not employees.
In the category of what Uber calls “nonconsensual sexual penetration,” or rape, riders made up nearly all the victims. In those cases, 99.4% of victims were riders and 89% were women or female identified. In the past, the NSVRC also consulted with the NFL, which spent millions on sexual violence prevention initiatives to rehabilitate its reputation after a domestic violence incident involving the player Ray Rice garnered widespread outrage in 2014.
In addition to the sexual assault numbers, Uber’s report also reveals traffic fatality data: There were 49 Uber-related deaths in 2017 and 58 in 2018. Federal agencies are more precise in tracking these other categories than they are at looking at sexual assault. Sexual violence isn’t well understood for many reasons, including a lack of common understanding among law enforcement about what it is and a long-standing apparent lack of interest among the men who dominate law enforcement and law making in the U.S.
Over a two-year period, a total of 5,981 sexual assault incidents across all five categories were reported out of more than 2 billion rides. That’s just .00026%. The company says the rate of sexual assaults actually dropped 16% from 2017 to 2018, hypothesizing that might have been because it tightened its driver requirements and added new safety features in that time period ― during which former CEO Travis Kalanick, who once dubbed the service he founded “boober,” was ousted from the company.
Some changes were made with the input of the sexual violence experts, like anonymizing data, which is critical especially for domestic violence victims who don’t want abusive partners to know their whereabouts or for drivers to have a record of their address. Centering SurvivorsWest, the in-house counsel, was emotional on Wednesday when he spoke with HuffPost in Uber’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. His sister-in-law Sen. Kamala Harris had just dropped her bid for the Democratic nomination for president. And West, whose wife Maya Harris worked on Sen. Harris’s campaign, teared up when asked about it. “That campaign. What it meant to little girls around the country,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. “I’m very proud of her.
However, it is easy for Uber to ban drivers, whom it doesn’t consider employees, or one rider out of millions of customers. Still, West, and advocates for sexual assault survivors, hope Uber’s move will push other companies to follow. It’s not an unreasonable hope. Tech companies once kept quiet about the percentages of women and people of color they employed. Now, thanks to public pressure from activists, diversity reports are fairly standard.
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