Over 500 sexual assault survivors are suing Uber, claiming the company placed insufficient safeguards and put them at risk while on trips.
According to court documents obtained by PEOPLE, passengers in multiple states were “kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, and/or otherwise attacked by an Uber driver with whom they had been paired through the Uber Application.”
Slater Slater Schulman LLP, a law firm specializing in defending victims of catastrophic and traumatic events, filed the complaint on Wednesday in San Francisco County Superior Court. The complaint also claims that the ride-share company was aware that “Uber drivers were sexually assaulting and raping female passengers” as “early as 2014.”
Despite acknowledging the “sexual assault crisis” in recent years, the company is accused in the complaint of failing to put in place the “basic safety measures necessary to prevent these serious sexual assaults, which continue to occur to this day.”
The civil lawsuit also refers to Uber’s implementation of a Safe Rides Fee in 2014, when it started adding a dollar to each journey to provide “the safest possible platform for Uber riders and drivers.”
“Uber’s whole business model is based on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern – growth was, at the expense of their passengers’ safety,” said Adam Slater, Founding Partner of Slater Slater Schulman LLP.
“There is so much more than the company can be doing to protect riders: adding cameras to deter assaults, performing more robust background checks on drivers, creating a warning system when drivers don’t stay on a path to a destination,” adds Slater. “But [Uber] refuse[s] to, and that’s why my firm has 550 clients with claims against Uber, and we’re investigating at least 150 more.”
A spokesperson from Uber said, “sexual assault is a horrific crime, and we take every single report seriously.”
“There is nothing more important than safety, which is why Uber has built new safety features, established survivor-centric policies, and been more transparent about serious incidents,” the statement continued. “While we can’t comment on pending litigation, we will continue to keep safety at the heart of our work.”
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