Driver Safety: About A Legal Settlement for Assaulted Drivers

We’ve all seen the news stories about drivers who have been assaulted. Incidents may not happen as often as the news would lead us to believe, but our safety is a legitimate concern that we should always have on our mind.

I want to share a great video by Cecily at Drive Girl Drive that covers the result of an interesting court case by drivers who had been assaulted while driving for rideshare apps. She also shares interesting thoughts about driver safety in general.

It’s Cecily, and this is Drive Girl Drive. I wanted to share something with you guys today.

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Drivers who were abused won a legal settlement

I was perusing Facebook, and I saw an ad for settlements for drivers that had been sexually abused while on the job for Uber or Lyft. And this particular post, I looked at the comments, and the comments were really an account of largely people who have been abused sexually or violated in some way by their riders. And it was a very common thing. There was a lot of women that spoke out in the comments, but to me what rang true is that there is a huge amount of people that have been violated on this job, and they felt like Uber or Lyft did not respond appropriately, and it’s still affecting them. And it should, because you’re a human being and you should not expect to be violated in any way.

Is Uber doing enough to protect drivers?

And it made me think to myself about being an independent contractor and you not being an employee. We often talk about how Uber doesn’t pay well, and there are certain benefits that we should have. But the one piece that I haven’t heard people talking about is protection. Driver safety is important, but protection in the sense that if you are in a situation where you are violated by somebody, if somebody hits on you, touches you inappropriately without your consent, says something to you inappropriately, hits you, takes something from you, these are all things I feel that Uber should have answers for and fail-safes for.

They should be concerned about drivers’ safety and they should do everything in their power to make sure that drivers are as safe as possible. And I know there’ve been a number of programs, beta testings and things like that, to see what can be done. And it’s hard to navigate in that space when it’s like, okay, so what is going to work for you may not work for me. Every instance is different. But, at the same time, we can’t sit here and negate that. There are issues of safety and that people have gone through things, and people have stopped driving because of these reasons.

You get a canned message saying, “Sorry that happened to you. You won’t be matched with that rider again.” I think that is the appropriate response, and I think there needs to be a lot more effort on Uber’s part, Lyft’s part to address these issues in the media and to push these agendas as much as they’re pushing riders’ safety and all that kind of stuff.

Settlements like these create a dialogue

It really comes down to having conversations. It comes down to education, and it comes down and putting some stuff in place and making sure that people are safe. And so, I feel like this settlement is actually going to start a dialogue, a national dialogue, a dialogue where people know what’s going on.

I think that with the strikes and with Uber going public that a lot of things are becoming public anyway. A lot of people don’t even understand or know or really are not even motivated to know what it takes to be an Uber driver. It figures a choice that you made, and whatever happens happens.

I assure you, being a person who knows what it’s like to be on both sides of the coin, I’m more sensitive to both issues. And if riders knew what drivers went through, or if they heard the stories, they’d be more empathetic. And so, I think having an opportunity to talk about these things, putting these things out there, is important. Not only for your fellow drivers, because informing each other is how we grow and how we win, but letting people know what’s going on on the other side of this is important too, because when it comes down to, it’s all about control, and the best way to gain control is to put laws into place to protect people, period.

And so, I was sitting here and they’re trying to think of security measures to vet the best drivers. They also need to figure out ways to make sure to keep drivers safe. Just because you’re a driver doesn’t mean that you should be open to any and everything that should happen to you, and that it’s your ass because you made the decision to become a driver. I don’t believe that.

The settlement could be reassuring to you if you’ve been through something similar

I’ve added the link to that settlement to my description, not because I support it, not because I’ve done any research, not because I’m a part of it, that I have no association at all. What I’m doing is making sure that you know, or if you know somebody that has gone through something like this, that you can share this information with them. And largely, I want everybody to win.

I’m not anti anybody. I’m not anti Uber, I’m not anti Lyft. I’m not anti you. I’m definitely not anti me. I just want people to get what they deserve, and I feel like good people should get what they deserve, and if you’ve been wronged in some way, you need to be compensated. Wrong needs to be right. That wrong needs to be right.

If you’ve ever had a situation with a rider, let me know in my comments. You don’t have to go into a long story, but if you can relate to some of the things that I’ve said in this video, please let me know.

And, as always, if you like this video, give me a thumbs up. If you’re not familiar with this channel, I talked about ride share, gig economy, and entrepreneurship.

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