Boosting Rideshare and Taxi Safety for Passengers and Drivers
When taking a cab or Uber, you may have questioned your driver’s taste in music, or even their choice of route or road maneuvers. But you might not have worried that you wouldn’t get to your destination safely.
Headlines about attacks on passengers that hire rides—and on the drivers themselves—have raised concerns about the safety of these services.
Today’s WatchBlog post looks at our work on efforts to improve rideshare and taxi safety.
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Concerns about rideshare and taxi safety
Violence against taxi drivers—who often work at night and alone, handle cash, and interact with people under the influence—is a well-documented issue. With the advent of rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft, questions are also being raised about the safety of both drivers and passengers who use app-based services.
On Valentine’s Day 2024, a Lyft driver in Houston was violently attacked by a passenger, who choked him with his own seatbelt. In 2019, a college student in South Carolina was murdered by a person impersonating a rideshare driver.
Just how widespread are safety issues in the rideshare and taxi industries? It’s hard to say for sure, as there’s no single source that tallies these attacks. Here’s what we do know:
- A group of advocacy organizations reviewed multiple public sources and reported that in 2022, at least 31 app-based workers, which included rideshare drivers, were murdered while working.
- Three rideshare companies reported 4,600 sexual assaults related to rides arranged on their apps in 2019.
- Five taxi companies we spoke to collect but do not publicly share incident data—which can include assault data.
- One federal database on worker fatalities reported 19 fatal assaults in these industries in 2019.
Several federal departments—Justice, Labor, and Health and Human Services—are required to collect data on crime and workplace injuries to workers nationally. But passenger injuries and fatalities generally fall outside the scope of those efforts. Also, the data that federal departments collect on driver injuries and fatalities may not be complete or comparable, as the departments differ in how they define “assault” and “driver.”
A lack of accurate and complete data on assaults leaves law enforcement, lawmakers, and rideshare and taxi companies without important information that could help them better protect drivers and passengers.
What’s being done to make rides safer?
Many states and localities require criminal background checks for drivers. Depending on state or local laws, these checks may be fingerprint-based and conducted by the FBI, or name-based and conducted by private screening companies.
Rideshare and taxi companies may also offer safety features, both in their apps and in vehicles. Some “in-app” features are intended for use before the trip. For example, some apps offer the driver’s name, photo, license plate, and make and model of their vehicle, which passengers can use to verify the ride. Other in-app features are for use during the trip, such as location-sharing and the ability to report a safety issue. “In-vehicle” features can include a panic button, a partition that serves as a physical barrier between driver and passenger, a security camera, and vehicle markings.
We surveyed passengers about these safety features. They told us they most frequently used pre-trip features available in apps.
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In addition, states, localities, and rideshare and taxi companies have taken other steps to boost safety. For example, some localities, like Chicago and New York City, have used public awareness campaigns to educate drivers and passengers about safety.
Other safety efforts by states, localities, and companies have included driver training, sharing information about drivers who have committed assaults, and conducting “stings” to curb imposter drivers.
To learn more about rideshare and taxi safety, read our report on assaults against drivers and passengers and our report on background checks and safety features.
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