The Hidden Dangers of Rideshare Apps: A Decade Later, Lobbying and Inaction Continue to Threaten Our Safety

When, back in 2012, I first wrote in Forbes about smartphone taxi and e-hail apps, I warned that while leveraging technology to improve transportation certainly promised to deliver great convenience, the evolving rideshare model also brought with it significant potential dangers.

Today, nearly 12 years later, platforms like Uber and Lyft have become mainstays of modern transportation in many cities – ubiquity and popularity, however, do not always translate into safety and security. In fact, as confirmed by recent safety reports released by Uber and Lyft, various safety shortcomings remain inadequately addressed, and sometimes deliver terrible consequences.

Although both rideshare giants have made strides forward when it comes to safety – and tout safety measures like background checks, tracking, and in-app emergency features – such measures are not necessarily sufficient; Uber’s report, for instance, notes that there have been thousands of reported problematic incidents, including assaults, harassment, and fatalities. While such numbers may seem small relative to the number of rides taken in Uber-associated vehicles, the reality is that we can do better than we are doing, and, importantly, if you or a loved one are one of those impacted, the general statistics don’t matter.

The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released the results of a study, GAO-24-106742, that examined the state of safety regulations in the rideshare industry. The study highlights critical gaps in safety regulations, particularly around how drivers are vetted, and how rideshare companies respond to incidents of misconduct or violence. While both Uber and Lyft have implemented measures to address safety concerns, the GAO’s report shows that such measures remain insufficient, particularly vis-à-vis ensuring proper oversight and accountability.

One of the most disturbing findings in the GAO report is, perhaps, the lack of consistent standards across states and cities. In fact, the GAO report notes that when some localities have attempted to implement rigorous safety regulations, rideshare companies have been able to bypass such rules by citing federal preemption. As such, many of the protections that riders and drivers might expect from traditional transportation services, such as taxis, are simply not assured by law when people ride in a vehicle hired via Uber or Lyft; some dangers are even aggravated by the fact that unlike taxis, that are typically clearly marked as being such, many rideshare cars are nearly indistinguishable from other vehicles on the road, especially when viewed from either side of the car from which one enters.

The GAO report also underscores that rideshare companies do not consistently provide meaningful transparency into the safety incidents that do occur; there appears to be a troubling lack of accountability when it comes to reporting to the public about accidents, injuries, and/or incidents involving drivers and riders. Additionally, it seems that riders are often left with little recourse when they face violence, harassment, or various other safety violations during their trips. And, while rideshare platforms promise to remove dangerous drivers from the road, the providers have not shared evidence that their processes, procedures, and actions in such regard are sufficiently effective.

The influence of lobbying efforts by rideshare companies may be aggravating the problem. According to an article in The Regulatory Review, Uber and Lyft have more lobbyists than Amazon, Microsoft, and Walmart combined. Furthermore, the article notes that the rideshare giants have lobbied quite heavily to preempt state and local regulations in favor of deregulation, permitting the companies to operate with fewer constraints – including allowing rideshare companies to sidestep essential safety measures that apply to traditional taxi services.

To understand what is at risk, one need look no further than the tragic case of Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina student who was murdered in 2019 by a man posing as an Uber driver; despite the obvious lesson that could have been learned from that tragedy, various simple mechanisms of improving user identification of rideshare vehicles – such as requiring drivers to provide a unique per-ride PIN code to riders prior to a rider entering a vehicle – remain unimplemented. Amazon uses such a security model to protect against financial loss when packages with expensive contents are delivered to areas prone to theft – shouldn’t we require at least the same level of security when it comes to protecting human life?

Furthermore, while various safety improvements have been implemented since Josephson’s murder, a safety report that Lyft released just a few months ago acknowledged several hundred cases of serious safety issues, including assault, harassment, and crashes. Uber’s own safety reports, most recently released in 2023, show that while incidents of serious violence are not frequent, they still do happen – possibly more often than many readers of this article would expect.

Just this week, we have also seen how the dangers posed by e-hail apps can extend well-beyond risks to individual riders. According to various reports, there were Uber drivers who helped perpetuate the recent anti-Semitic attacks in Amsterdam – in which dozens of Israeli nationals were ambushed and physically assaulted, forcing Israel to evacuate planeloads of its citizens from the area – by utilizing the Uber system as a tool to track targets’ hotels and/or locations. Uber is currently investigating the matter; should reports of Uber driver involvement prove to be accurate, we must ask: How well were the drivers who provided such information to criminals vetted?

Eventually, legal actions may also help the public learn more about rideshare companies’ driver-vetting processes and procedures .

Rideshare apps are here to stay – and there are, in fact, ways to greatly improve your safety when getting into a stranger’s car. (I will discuss some in an upcoming article.) That said, we can improve safety without undermining convenience or increasing costs.

While (as I will discuss in the same upcoming piece) there are several simple things that the rideshare companies could do to improve the safety of riders, the reality is that government has a role to play as well: Mandating industry-wide comprehensive, clear, and standardized policies, procedures, and methods of performing driver background checks, real-time video monitoring, and incident reporting are essential steps forward that should be taken as soon as possible.