Trust and safety have always been major issues with the sharing/gig/peer-to-peer economy. But data on the safety problems in this growing part of the economy have been non-existent. But that's starting to change.
Last week Uber released a U.S. safety report that provides details on the number of sexual assaults, murders and fatal crashes that occurred through its platform in 2017 and 2018.
The New York Times article headline on the report - Uber Says 3,045 Sexual Assaults Were Reported in U.S. Rides Last Year - sums up the media coverage of the report, which has highlighted the number of sexual assaults.
And 3,045 sexual assaults is a lot and the actual number is no doubt higher because of unreported assaults.
But Uber also provides a lot of rides - 1.3 billion in the U.S. in 2018. This means the incident rate per ride was only .0002%.
Almost half (44%) of the sexual assault victims were drivers. This again is not good and too many. But it means the rider incident rate was only .0001%.
Uber also reported 58 fatal crashes and 10 murders in 2018.
interestingly enough, there's almost nothing to compare Uber's data with.
Similar national data does not exist for the taxi industry nor for most other forms of transportation.
Uber is also the first rideshare company to provide this data (Lyft says it plans to do so in the future).
So we don't know how this data compares with other forms of transportation.
But we do know you're less likely to die in a car crash while riding an Uber than you are driving yourself. This is because there is national data on car accident fatalities. Key quote from the Safety Report:
"The Uber-related motor vehicle fatality rate for 2017 was 0.59 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled; it was 0.57 fatalities per 100 million miles traveled in 2018. For both years, the Uber data is about half of the national rates."
Regardless of how you feel about Uber's safety data, it's good they've released it. Key quote from the NY Times article:
Sexual violence experts agreed that publishing the numbers was an important step in combating abuse across the industry.
“That a company is willing to peel back the drapes and let us look into what is happening is, to me, the success,” said Cindy Southworth, the executive vice president of the National Network to End Domestic Violence and a member of Uber’s safety advisory board.
The more data we have on this the better. And hopefully, Uber's release will lead to others collecting and releasing their safety data.
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