If You’ve Ever Felt Unsafe in an Uber: Ridesharing apps’ SOS button hasn’t improved user safety. Here’s what they can do about it

I’m a fan of mass transit, but for me, the ongoing pandemic has meant less subway usage and more private transportation when I need to make a trip across town I can’t reasonably reach by foot.

A few weeks ago, I did just that. I took an Uber to an appointment to get some documents notarized that actually wasn’t that far away, but it was windy and raining something awful, and the walk from the nearest underground stop to the notary’s office was long enough that I was sure to get drenched. So I hailed an Uber.

I was leaving earlier a bit earlier than I needed to; according to the app, I would arrive at my destination 10 minutes early. A bit of a problem in the driving rain and wind, but it’s taken me a couple of weeks to secure this appointment, and I figured it would be better to leave early, in case there was suddenly traffic due to the rain.

As soon as I got in the car, the driver was chatty. Nothing creepy or weird, just talking about the weather (terrible!), corona (long!), construction in the city, what summer might be like. Typical polite chitchat. Since we were still on lockdown here in Berlin, the driver was actually the first person I had spoken to?in person?that day, so while I wasn’t in the mood to chat, at the same time I appreciated the human connection.

I’ve taken a taxi to this notary’s office before, and have also walked to it, biked to it, and taken mass transit to it. I know all the routes. And we started out taking one of those typical routes, the roads surprisingly clear and the traffic light. It looked like I would be arriving 10 minutes early after all.

But as my chitchat with the driver continued, he turned off the main road and started weaving through the side streets.

I wasn’t particularly alarmed — it was the middle of the day, I didn’t feel a sense of danger from the driver, and anyway we have a unit dedicated exactly to this scenario in Pretty Deadly Self Defense, so I also had an action plan should anything go wrong. Nothing did go wrong, mind you. The detour actually proved beneficial: I arrived at my meeting exactly on time, the driver wished me a good day, and then drove off.

But I did feel pretty uncomfortable while I was in that car, being driven around backstreets just so the driver could talk to me.

Photo by?Austin Distel?on?Unsplash

Because that’s what he did. He prolonged the trip so he could keep talking to me. This has happened before, and it’s?happened to a lot of women, not just in Ubers, but also in Lyfts, in Grabs, and even in regular old yellow cabs. It’s not necessarily even sexual, although it is definitely gendered. And while ride-hailing and ride-sharing has been on the rise, so has threats to women’s safety. That’s why we developed a self defense unit just for this situation.

But it’s been so long since it’s happened to me, I had almost forgotten this feeling of being?trapped.

Out of curiosity, I checked the Uber app and hit the safety button just to see what was there. Not much. I can alert a friend or family member who can track my route, I can report the driver to Uber, or if I’m feeling very unsafe I can call emergency assistance. (In the Lyft app, the same features are available.)

If I Share My Trip, a friend or family member can watch the route tracker and make sure I arrive safely. But in this instance, if someone was watching the route tracker, they would see that the car is still moving. While it’s off the main road, it’s running fairly parallel to it.

If I had been watching this trip for a friend, I might assume construction or a traffic jam due to the rain. I’ve driven in city traffic: traffic jams, construction, work on a sewer line can pepper your route with no forewarning. There could be a million very banal reasons to take what looks like, on my app, only a slight detour.

Photo by?Priscilla Du Preez?on?Unsplash

I could use the Report Safety Issue feature, and send a quick text saying “the driver is not staying on the route”. After hitting “send”, I would receive a message that reads “Thank you for reporting your issues. A member of our Safety Team will contact you.”

Which doesn’t really solve my problem while I’m still in the back of the car, though.

I can tap on the Safety Center, and access information about Community Guidelines, Uber’s driver screening process, and professional organizations for post-trauma or legal support should anything happen to me, as well as insurance options, naming “trusted contacts” or, if necessary, calling for emergency help.

These features didn’t make me feel safer at all, other than giving me the vague sense that, if I tapped any of these buttons, someone would eventually do?something. But… what, exactly? And more importantly,?when?

On the Lyft app, the same safety features are available, although if I choose to tap the Emergency link, text underneath the button tells there will first be a 10 second countdown, and then a signal will be sent via a private security company to my local police.

However, it’s not transparent what kind of signal is being sent, e.g., is it classified as high priority? Because emergency responders depend upon that classification. Assuming it is classified as a high priority, it can still take a responding unit a minimum of 5 minutes to arrive on the scene, although the average is 7 minutes.

7 minutes is a very long time for someone who is being threatened with violence.

7 minutes is a very long time for someone to fend off an attack.

7 minutes is an eternity when you’re being raped.

7 minutes is no time at all if you’re killed.

Because a lot can happen in those 7 minutes.

Photo by?David Preston?on?Unsplash

Prevention is commendable, support is crucial, but what happens in between?

Uber made history by making their study on sexual violence and rider safety open source, and their solutions as well, from fitting out their ride hailing app with safety features to providing sexual violence awareness training to their drivers, to training and empowering safety support teams around the world. They’ve now become industry standard.

However, the problem with these safety features is that they only provide ways of calling for?help, but the whole reason a truly malevolent driver rolls up the windows and locks the doors and drives off piste is because he knows — and that female riders know — that no one can hear you scream.

While doing research for this post, I came across this article about Uber’s Safety Center for sub-Saharan Africa, based in Cairo: “The key concern is that you want your issue addressed, so you’re less concerned what is the accent on the other side of the phone and more concerned is that person able to help me address my concern,” says Alon Lits, general manager of Uber for sub-Saharan Africa.

This approach seems to be the guiding principle for Uber and its competitors for their safety protocols across the globe, e.g., the idea that users just want to be heard and taken seriously.

But that’s only partly true.

None of the research or tech development reflects the reality of real-time panic or fear. It’s true that harsh braking may not be “top of mind” when your ride drops you at an important meeting that you’re walking right into. But it’s not “top of mind” issues that are at play when a person feels threatened or in fear of being physically harmed or killed. It’s survival.

Most importantly of all, none of the safety responses indicate any plan to reduce the long-term cost to the victim.

While post-trauma support alleviates that cost, it does not reduce it.

In the US, both Lyft and Uber have partnered with RAINN to provide sexual assault support, but I’m unclear on the policies of Uber and Lyft on this — if an Uber or Lyft driver sexually assaults a passenger, does the company pay for the victim’s therapy? Likewise if the reverse happens, e.g., a passenger sexually assaults a driver. Who covers the recovery? Sexual assaults on average translate into individual costs of more than $1 million over the ensuing lifetime of the victim, and contributes to the $3 billion annual cost to the US economy. Numbers are similar for other countries, simply because, while the form of assault may vary, the cost of sexual assault is universal.

A user can make a report and she’ll be refunded, contacted by the support team and assured that she won’t be matched with that driver ever again. But she still has had to go through the experience, and the driver is still out there driving, doing the same thing to someone else. Who knows how many times he continues assaulting, or just creeping on, passengers before another woman reports it — because women don’t feel comfortable reporting it. Look at the amount of apology in this post about a driver:

This quote is taken from a Reddit thread about drivers who retaliate against women by?reporting passengers?when the passenger refuses his sexual advances. I wonder if Uber or Lyft or any of the mobility apps understand?why?this happens, e.g., why the driver retaliates. And are ride sharing apps aware that so often, no matter how strongly they encourage users to report these incidents, users feel so endangered from the exchange, they simply delete the app?

It's equally important to understand that when women answer questionnaires and surveys about sexual assault and violence, there is stigma associated?with the answers, so only a small percentage of respondents are willing to speak frankly about their experiences, which skews the data. It’s widely understood that sexual assault and gender-based violence goes underreported, and is applicable to?every level of reporting, including not only independent surveys and focus groups by private companies, but also when reporting incidents on an app.

As Uber says about it’s own safety report, it’s hard to solve a problem if you can’t see it. But their in-app safety solutions and even pre-screening and reporting measures still don’t seem to see the reality of user experiences or safety needs.

Photo by?Barna Bartis?on?Unsplash

Just Hire More Female Drivers

Looking at safety from the drivers’ perspectives as well, who have also been victims of assault, with female drivers being particularly vulnerable. Especially post-pandemic, when women have suffered higher job losses than men, driving for Uber, Lyft or Grab can be a crucial, if not the only, means of income at the moment. And here we go back to the same issues of reporting and women’s reluctance to do so, only this time with fear of loss of income added on top.

What I realized I was looking for in the Uber app on that ride is exactly the kind of information we teach in our Pretty Deadly Self Defense Taxi Unit: I wanted to know what to do. I wanted a game plan. How do I get out of this? What if I tell him to stop and let me out, and he locks the doors instead?

What can I do?right now?

Pretty Deadly’s Taxi Unit provides all our users with practical information for the scenarios above, and that we’ve all experienced and know about, from safely cutting a ride short to de-escalating an angry driver to worst-case scenarios of being taken to an off-grid location.

Since space is so constrained in a moving vehicle, none of the solutions we offer in this unit are based on physical techniques. Instead, our solutions inform action plans that can be executed easily and immediately, to minimize risk of violence, disrupt it as it’s happening and, more importantly to?our?specific work, reduce the risk of long-term trauma.

Pretty Deadly is a self defense curriculum and trainer certification program, so everything we do can be found in our trainer manuals. Because the program has been field tested and further developed over the past 5 years in Berlin — a hub city that actively incorporates literally every method of urban mobility — it also has been revised to be easily accessible, replicable and scalable for multi-language, international users. An especially crucial feature for our Taxi Unit.

Photo by?Julian Myles?on?Unsplash

Companies like Uber, Lyft and Didi and Grab have already innovated both mobility and opportunities for economic empowerment for local eoncomies. They have the potential to be true innovators in user safety too, by providing practical, pragmatic, user-focused solutions with actionable, effective information that can be used right away. Think safety cards used in airplanes — probably one of the most elegantly simple, user-empowering safety features ever invented. By providing an easy to use, clear guide of what to do in an emergency, that laminated card manages to calm most flyers’ nerves just by knowing it’s there.

We’d love to share our expertise and work with ride-sharing apps to help ensure the short- and long-term safety of all passengers and drivers, and make sure that ride-hailing and ride-sharing continues to be the option people?feel safe?to use. Imagine the lifetime value of your customers, when you’re the ones proactively trying to keep them safe.