Uber’s 2017-2018 Safety Reports Reveal Traffic Deaths, Murders & Sexual Assaults

Written by Jasmine

When Uber Technologies, Inc. was first introduced to the world in 2009, the popular ride service company took consumers by storm. Since then however, Uber has been catching a lot of backlash over their safety methods… or lack thereof.

In an effort to be more transparent, the company has released safety reports from its billions of U.S. rides occurring in 2017 and 2018, something they plan to do every two years.

According to the report, out of Uber’s 1.3 billion U.S. rides in 2018 more than 3,000 sexual assaults were reported, including 235 rapes. In 2017, 2,936 sexual assaults were reported, including 229 rapes.

“Sexual assault in the report is defined broadly into categories including non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part, attempted non-consensual sexual penetration, non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part and non-consensual sexual penetration.”

The report also revealed a total of 97 reported crashes in 2017 and 2018, which resulted in 107 deaths. The company also experienced nine murders during 2018 rides and 10 during 2017 rides.

In a Twitter post regarding the safety report, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated “I suspect many people will be surprised at how rare these incidents are; others will understandably think they’re still too common. Some people will appreciate how much we’ve done on safety; others will say we have more work to do. They will all be right.”

Uber believes it is worth noting that 99.9% of its 2017-2018 U.S. rides reported no safety issues.