The Uber Document
A day or two ago, Uber (as in the rideshare organization) released a complete report of sexual assault and sexual harassment reported by anybody utilizing Uber’s services (including both riders and drivers).
As you can probably imagine, that has exploded on the media and there are a lot of interesting comments and ideas about how to use this information, how accurate it is, and even why Uber did it.
You can read about their taxonomy here (taxonomy, in this case, being a system of language that they designed with a national resource center to help them collect data - because if you don’t know what to call it, you can’t look for it, right?).
And you can read some news coverage about the statistics contained within the document here and here (this second one is actually the full text of the report from Uber).
The report is lengthy, the taxonomy exhaustive. But what does this actually all mean? Does this demonstrate the full scope of the problem? Or not? What can we do with this information? What should we do with this information? What is Uber going to do with this information? I’m offering below a few thoughts on some of these questions, interweaving my personal experiences both in education and in forensic medicine.
So, first and foremost, a quick look at the statistics and what was measured:
The Taxonomy (i.e., what was measured): this was divided by Uber into two major categories with sub-categories as discussed below.
Category 1: Sexual Misconduct
Staring or Leering
Comments or Gestures (asking personal questions)
Comments or Gestures (about personal appearance)
Comments or Gestures (flirting)
Comments or Gestures (explicit gestures)
Comments or Gestures (explicit comments)
Displaying indecent material
Indecent photography without consent
Soliciting sexual contact
Masturbation / Indecent Exposure
Verbal threat of sexual assault
Category 2: Sexual Assault
Attempted touching: non-sexual body part
Attempted touching: sexual body part
Attempted kissing: non-sexual body part
Attempted kissing: sexual body part
Non-consensual touching: non-sexual body part
Non-consensual touching: sexual body part
Non-consensual kissing: non-sexual body part
Non-consensual kissing: sexual body part
Attempted non-consensual sexual penetration
Non-consensual sexual penetration
What the report shows: taking a look at the numbers of these crimes that they reported.
** In the executive summary, they acknowledge my first and most important point - that we know that sexual assault and crimes of sexual violence are vastly underreported, and thus, this report, while interesting that they gathered this data and put it together, is likely very much the extreme tippy-tippiest of the iceberg of the actual numbers. **
Non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part: 570 incidents in 2017, 594 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part: 390 incidents in 2017, 376 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual touching of a sexual body part: 1440 incidents in 2017, 1560 incidents in 2018.
Attempted non-consensual sexual penetration: 307 incidents in 2017, 280 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual sexual penetration: 229 incidents in 2017, 235 incidents in 2018.
This is out of 1 billion rides in 2017 and 1.3 billion rides in 2018.
Uber’s main focus is that they are demonstrating very low rates overall of sexually violent crimes, since that averages out to about 0.0001% of rides reporting an incident (for non-consensual touching of a sexual body part by example).
My first point, however, is twofold: 1) We know that sexually violent crimes are vastly underreported, and 2) this is still an unacceptable number of victimizations taking place within a company…and in an industry in which we are literally placing our life and safety in the hands of a stranger.
According to RAINN, we know that approximately 3 out of every 4 sexually violent crimes are not reported to police. That’s 75% of crimes that actually happen.
If we assume that this statistic holds at smaller sample sizes, too (like Uber), that would mean that the numbers look more like this:
Non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part: ~1000 incidents in 2017, ~1039 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part: ~682 incidents in 2017, ~658 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual touching of a sexual body part: ~2,520 incidents in 2017, ~2,730 incidents in 2018.
Attempted non-consensual sexual penetration: ~537 incidents in 2017, ~490 incidents in 2018.
Non-consensual sexual penetration: ~400 incidents in 2017, ~411 incidents in 2018.
And this is an assumption that we are making using the RAINN statistics that the actual number of unreported or delayed reporting of crimes isn’t even higher than this.
My second point, and this is colloquial based on my experience interviewing victims of crimes from Uber and Lyft drivers, is that this is not taking into consideration impersonation vehicles / drivers. I have no statistics to back this up, but I can say with confidence that I have processed several cases that ended up not being the driver that they called, but rather, someone who presented themselves to the curb and claimed to be their driver. Uber’s solution to this is this post on safe riding tips in which they suggest that you double check the license plate and driver name and picture with the person who picks you up. There’s a few issues that I have with this post: first of all, they call it “women’s safety tips”, but these crimes don’t only happen with female victims. Second of all, this is rape culture / victim-blaming at work, because if you’re suggesting that a victim needs to be responsible for controlling the behavior of a predator, what will you say when the victim doesn’t do that? Exactly - something along the lines of “well, it could have been prevented if she/he had just verified that the right person picked them up”. And lastly, people routinely use these services when they have been imbibing alcohol as a way to prevent driving while intoxicated. Wonderful idea, but then judgement is limited and the safety forethoughts that may frequently exist in a sober person are not always present in an intoxicated one. This is NOT the fault of the victim, nor should we be saying that victims should control their alcohol use to prevent sexual assault.
My third point is around what people are asking of Uber after reading this report. Most of the posts that I’ve seen on Twitter and elsewhere are calling for more stringent background checks and excluding drivers based on their criminal history. The most major problem with this is that this is focusing on predators who have been arrested AND CONVICTED previously. The Bureau on Criminal Justice says that on average, about 64% of those inmates convicted of forcible rape had any prior convictions. In addition, as we saw in the RAINN statistics, 4.6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators of sexual assault will not be convicted for their crimes. So, taking into consideration these two statistics, I don’t believe that more stringent background checks are the answer. You can read about Uber’s background check policy in the executive summary of their released report.
Of course, that brings us to what we should do with this information and overall to help keep people safe in their homes and outside of their homes, sober or intoxicated, and regardless of age, gender, and background. My answer to this is simply one step at a time. I do commend Uber for even confronting this as a company (even if they have been under enormous public pressure to do so). Education and enlightenment help bring us out of darkness and shine a light into those dark and secretive corners of our society. Just by reading this post, you are moving or have moved in that direction, and taking the time to continue to advocate for education in your work and home environment and being an advocate for victims brings us one step closer. There is no easy solution, but together, we can move closer to a world in which these crimes are far less common.
Comments welcome! I look forward to hearing your thoughts!