When Safety Is a Slogan, Not a Standard: Uber’s Sexual Assault Problem Is No Surprise

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by Michael J. Epstein, Managing Partner, The Epstein Law Firm, P.A.

 

Tuesday’s New York Times’ expose into Uber’s handling of sexual assaults by its drivers should shock the conscience. For many, it will. For those of us who have been following the ride-share industry closely—and representing victims of its worst failures—it’s anything but surprising.

The Times reports that Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the U.S. roughly every eight minutes between 2017 and 2022. That’s not a typo. Every eight minutes. That’s more than 60 reports a day. And that’s just what was reported to Uber—any lawyer who works with assault victims can tell you the actual number is higher, because many survivors never report at all.

In public, Uber has spent years marketing itself as one of the safest transportation options available. The company’s safety pages are slick, its PR campaigns confident. It touts safety features in its app, and it publishes glossy reports emphasizing how rare “serious” incidents are. But behind the curtain, according to sealed court records, internal documents, and whistleblower accounts, Uber’s own safety teams knew the problem was pervasive, and they tested tools that could have made a real difference. They also chose not to require or implement many of those tools.

That’s the heart of the problem. Uber appears to have treated sexual assault not as an existential crisis to its business model, but as a chronic operational cost—something to be managed, litigated, and PR-spun rather than aggressively eradicated.

“Part of Doing Business” Should Never Apply to Assault

If a company operated in an industry where customers were routinely poisoned, it wouldn’t matter how many millions of safe meals they served; a single poisoning would spark outrage and demand immediate action. Yet somehow, with sexual assault—an equally devastating form of harm—Uber seems to have calculated that it could manage the legal and reputational fallout without making fundamental changes to its platform.

Why? Because changing the system would mean changing the model that’s been in place since Uber’s founding. And that model is built on rapid, low-cost scaling—getting as many drivers on the road as possible, with as few barriers to entry as possible, in as many markets as possible. Adding robust safety screening, real-time trip monitoring, or gender-based pairing options? That’s expensive. It slows growth. It adds friction.

And so, according to the Times, Uber tested things like sophisticated passenger-driver matching algorithms, mandatory in-car video recording, and pairing female passengers with female drivers—but either delayed them, made them optional, or scrapped them entirely. This isn’t because these measures didn’t work; by all accounts, many of them did. It’s because they would have required a cultural shift at Uber from prioritizing scale to prioritizing safety.

The Legal Reality Uber Knows All Too Well

Uber’s leadership isn’t naïve about the legal risk. Large-scale sexual assault litigation has been brewing for years. Hundreds of cases are now part of consolidated proceedings, many of them under seal. The legal exposure is enormous—not just in dollars, but in reputational damage if more of these internal records become public.

Here in New Jersey, I’ve handled enough personal injury and negligence cases, including those involving Uber and Lyft, to know how companies think when they’re facing systemic risk. They ask: What’s our liability exposure? What’s the settlement cost per case? Can we keep cases out of the press? How can we frame the narrative so it looks like we’re in control?

That is risk management. It is not prevention. And for a company in the business of physically transporting human beings—often women traveling alone, late at night, in unfamiliar areas—anything short of aggressive prevention is inexcusable.

A Problem of Trust

Ridesharing is built on trust. Riders trust that the driver who picks them up has been vetted, that their route will be safe, that if something goes wrong, the company will have their back. That trust is the only reason millions of people hit “Confirm” on the app every day.

When that trust is broken, especially in the most intimate and violent way possible, the damage can’t be undone. Survivors are left with trauma that can last a lifetime. And when they learn that the company could have taken steps to prevent what happened to them but didn’t, the betrayal cuts even deeper.

What Uber Must Do—Right Now

It’s time for Uber to treat sexual assault prevention the way airlines treat crash prevention: as mission-critical, non-negotiable, and worth any cost. That means:

Mandatory real-time trip monitoring. Every ride should be tracked with systems that can detect anomalies—unscheduled stops, route deviations, extended idle times—and trigger immediate checks or interventions.

Gender-based driver-passenger pairing. If a female passenger requests a female driver, that should be an option everywhere Uber operates.

Comprehensive, recurring driver screening. Not just at onboarding, but at regular intervals, using updated criminal background databases and flagging any new incidents.

Mandatory in-car video recording. This is uncomfortable for some, but the deterrent value and evidentiary power in the event of a crime are undeniable.

Transparent reporting and accountability. Annual safety reports should include unfiltered data on assaults and what Uber is doing to prevent them—not just the statistics that make them look good.

These are not radical ideas. Many of them have already been tested by Uber itself. The barrier is not feasibility—it’s willingness.

A Message to Survivors

If you’ve been assaulted during an Uber ride, you should know: you are not alone, and you have legal options. You have the right to hold both the driver and the company accountable for what happened. You have the right to answers, to support, and to justice. And you should not be intimidated by the size or influence of the corporation involved.

As an attorney in this area of practice, I’ve seen firsthand the courage it takes for survivors to come forward. I’ve also seen how powerful it can be when their stories help force change. But survivors shouldn’t have to carry the burden of reform. That’s Uber’s job.

The Bottom Line

Uber cannot continue to treat sexual assault as an unavoidable byproduct of its business model. Every assault is preventable if the company commits the necessary resources and makes safety—not speed or scale—the priority.

Until that happens, the words “Your safety is our priority” will remain a slogan. And slogans don’t save lives. Action does.

 

About Michael J. Epstein

Michael J. Epstein, a Harvard Law School graduate, is a trial lawyer and managing partner of The Epstein Law Firm, P.A., a law firm based in New Jersey.