This Week in Rideshare: Assaults, 741 Miles, and Uber’s Existence.
Lyft releases data, a driver gets an insane request, and will Uber survive? LegalRideshare breaks it down.
MONDAY 10/25/21
In an effort to improve public opinion, Lyft has released its own reporting on sexual assaults. The verdict? Not too good. SFIST reported:
While the company claims that nearly 40% of the sexual assaults were by riders. more than a thousand assault cases a year seems unusually high for any type of business.
The good news, as Lyft tells it, is that these assaults appear to be rare on their much-used platform. “From 2017 to 2019, over 99% of trips occurred without any reported safety incident,” Lyft says in their own words on their own 16-page report. “The safety incidents referenced in this report account for 0.0002% of all trips.”
TUESDAY 10/26/21
An Uber passenger is getting jail time after attacking his driver. 12 News reported:
Court records show Schoelles, who was intoxicated, attempted to hit Ochoa while he was driving. Ochoa pulled over and asked the passengers to leave, but Schoelles hit him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.
“Thank God I survived, you know, because it was tough,” Ochoa said.
Ochoa’s nose was broken into several pieces.
“Never in my life have I felt that I was close to losing my life,” Ochoa said.
WEDNESDAY 10/27/21
Uber’s CEO wants drivers to own Teslas. CNN reported:
Hertz (HTZ) announced on Tuesday that it had placed an order for 100,000 Teslas as it tries to electrify its fleet. Through a partnership with Hertz, Uber (UBER) plans to offer 50,000 of them to its drivers to rent by 2023.
Khosrowshahi said that its drivers who chose to rent a Tesla through Hertz would receive a $1-a-ride bonus, up to $4,000 a year. Less than 10% of Uber’s drivers rent their vehicles, but they tend to drive more miles, he said.
“This is an open doorway for our driver community to try it… If you’ve been in a Tesla, I have, once you try it, you want to buy it,” Khosrowshahi told CNN’s Julia Chatterley on First Move Wednesday.
THURSDAY 10/28/21
A DoorDash driver was asked to make a 741 mile delivery. Distractify added:
In the video, Ohio resident @kaelumgrantt pointed out a DoorDash delivery request he had received all the way from Rhode Island. The total mileage for the journey was a whopping 741.4 miles.
However, if Kaelum were to have taken the job, he would’ve only received $9.25 for the delivery. Nine dollars and twenty five cents for a trip that would’ve taken him at least 11 hours.
FRIDAY 10/29/21
Will Uber exist by 2030? One researcher at London School of Economics has his doubts. He adds:
It never had to worry about the expansion of overhead and risk associated with employment agreements and fleet management. This was outsourced to individual drivers who operated, according to Uber, as independent contractors. This arrangement, however, has started to face substantial legal challenges.
A point of hope for many investors was the prospect of self-driving cars allowing Uber to make its service more efficient. In London, Uber takes around 25 per cent of the revenue generated by rides, the rest going to drivers to cover the expenses involved in running the vehicle and to provide them with an income for their labour.
If Uber’s business strategy fails to succeed, then it may cause the momentum behind the app-based venture capital frenzy to fade
LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries.
