Uber received more than 400,000 complaints of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the US against the ride-hailing app’s drivers between 2017 and 2022 — far more than the 12,522 the company disclosed publicly, according to a blockbuster report.
The attacks amounted to one nearly every eight minutes, the New York Times reported, citing unsealed court records.
The claims are contained in documents that were recently unsealed as part of massive litigation against Uber, which has long promoted itself as one of the safest transportation options available.
More than 2,300 victims from across the country have joined together in one big case, accusing the company of failing to screen drivers properly, ignoring warning signs and putting profits over passenger safety.
The victims combined their complaints into a consolidated multidistrict litigation whereby major trial motions such as discovery are streamlined — though each individual plaintiff must still prove their case.
A judge ruled in July that these cases can move forward, and the first trials — known as bellwether trials — are scheduled to begin in San Francisco federal court in December.
The Post has sought comment from attorneys for the plaintiffs.
Uber denies claims it hid sexual assault data, arguing that most of the 400,000 reports from 2017–2022 were minor, unaudited or false. The company said that the reported incidents amounted to just 0.006% of total trips.
“The most serious reports were even rarer, at 0.00002%, or 1 in 5 million,” Uber stated.
Hannah Nilles, Uber’s head of safety for the Americas, acknowledged to the Times that roughly 75% of these reports involved what she termed “less serious” incidents, including inappropriate comments about appearance, unwanted flirting or explicit language.
She also noted that the reports haven’t been independently audited and could potentially include fraudulent claims from users seeking refunds.
The company has not released data on any incidents since 2022, though reports of sexual attacks have increased, according to court records cited by the Times.
In one harrowing incident in December 2023, a woman in Houston alleged that she was raped by her Uber driver after a ride that was supposed to last 22 minutes ended five hours later at a Motel 6.
Uber’s systems sent three automated notifications during suspicious stops, but the woman did not respond, and the driver, who was previously accused twice of misconduct, completed the ride at 2:01 a.m., the records show.
In May and July of last year, Uber documented cases where drivers allegedly assaulted intoxicated passengers — including a driver in St. Louis accused of forcing a passenger to perform oral sex before picking up other riders.
According to internal documents, Uber officials were lax in implementing safety reforms that were recommended by the company’s own data scientists, including mandatory video recording and pairing female passengers with female drivers.
Despite developing sophisticated safety tools that proved effective in testing, Uber delayed or chose not to implement some of the most promising solutions, the Times reported.
The company created an algorithmic system called Safety Risk Assessed Dispatch that could anticipate 15% of sexual assaults in its basic ride service during Los Angeles testing in 2018.
Internal presentations described it as potentially the “most effective intervention for preventing sexual assaults.”
However, a 2024 internal document revealed a critical flaw in the technology, which “still dispatched trips identified as high-risk.”
A company official told the Times that completely blocking high-risk trips, such as late-night pickups from bars, would strand many people and potentially encourage dangerous alternatives like drunk driving.
The documents also revealed that Uber’s safety decisions were influenced by priorities including user base growth, lawsuit avoidance and protecting its business model that classifies drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, according to the Times.
This distinction proves crucial for the company’s financial structure, as contractors don’t receive benefits, oversight or employment protections that traditional workers would have.
“Our purpose/goal is not to be the police,” stated a 2021 internal brainstorming document about global safety standards.
“Our bar is much lower and our goal is to protect the company and set the tolerable risk level for our operations.”
The company’s own research identified clear patterns in sexual assault incidents, according to the Times.
Women represent the majority of victims whether they’re passengers or drivers, with attacks typically occurring late at night and on weekends, often involving pickups near bars.
Male perpetrators usually had histories of sexual misconduct complaints and poor user ratings, according to internal analyses cited by the Times.
Nilles told the Times that Uber expects company data covering 2023 and onward to show that the rate of “critical sexual assaults” fell to the lowest level in years.
The company also defended its record, saying it’s invested billions in safety, cut serious assault rates by 44%, and developed tools like S-RAD to improve driver-passenger matching.
S-RAD stands for Safety Risk Assessed Dispatch, an internal Uber algorithm designed to improve trip safety by prioritizing better driver-passenger matches based on risk factors.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Uber has been more transparent on the issue of sexual assault than any other corporation,” the company wrote in a statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
