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London’s transportation regulators on Monday stripped Uber UBER, -1.39% of its license to operate in the English capital, citing a “pattern of failures” that put customers’ safety at risk — and pushing rideshare-app safety back into the global consciousness.
Despite Uber having instituted “a number of positive changes” over the past year and a half, Transport for London said, “TfL has identified a pattern of failures by the company, including several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk.”
“Despite addressing some of these issues, TfL does not have confidence that similar issues will not reoccur in the future, which has led it to conclude that the company is not fit and proper at this time,” the regulator added.
Transport for London cited as a major issue an Uber system change that let unauthorized drivers upload their photos to Uber drivers’ accounts and “pick up passengers as though they were the booked driver” in at least 14,000 trips. Dismissed or suspended drivers had also been able to create Uber accounts and transport passengers, the regulator said.
“TfL recognizes the steps that Uber has put in place to prevent this type of activity,” Transport for London said. “However, it is a concern that Uber’s systems seem to have been comparatively easily manipulated.”
Jamie Heywood, Uber’s regional general manager for Northern and Eastern Europe, called the decision “extraordinary and wrong” in a statement sent to MarketWatch.
“We have fundamentally changed our business over the last two years and are setting the standard on safety. TfL found us to be a fit and proper operator just two months ago, and we continue to go above and beyond,” he said. “On behalf of the 3.5 million riders and 45,000 licensed drivers who depend on Uber in London, we will continue to operate as normal and will do everything we can to work with TfL to resolve this situation.”
Uber has audited every driver in London over the past two months, Heywood added, and has “robust systems and checks in place” to confirm drivers’ identities. The company will soon introduce a new facial-matching process, he said.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also registered his disapproval on Twitter TWTR, +1.58% Monday morning.
“We understand we’re held to a high bar, as we should be. But this TfL decision is just wrong,” he wrote. “Over the last 2 years we have fundamentally changed how we operate in London. We have come very far — and we will keep going, for the millions of drivers and riders who rely on us.”
Uber, which previously lost its license in London in 2017, says it plans to appeal the regulator’s latest decision not to renew its license. The company has 21 days to appeal and can keep operating in the meantime, Transport for London said.
The announcement came days after news that Uber would allow riders and drivers to record audio of rides in a move to promote safety, the Associated Press reported. The feature will pilot in Mexico and Brazil next month.
One tip: Ask your driver, ‘What’s my name?’
In another prominent case that thrust rideshare safety into the spotlight, Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old University of South Carolina student from New Jersey, climbed into a black four-door Chevrolet Impala she thought was her Uber after a night out with friends in late March, police said. Hunters later found her body in a wooded area with “multiple sharp force injuries.” Authorities charged Nathaniel Rowland, 25, with her alleged kidnapping and murder.
The young woman’s death prompted action to strengthen ridesharing safety: South Carolina State Reps. Seth Rose and Micah Caskey in April, for example, introduced a “Samantha L. Josephson Ridesharing Safety Act” bill — later signed into law — requiring rideshare drivers to display illuminated, company-provided signage. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in June signed into law similar legislation, also bearing Josephson’s name, that required rideshare companies to provide drivers with additional identification materials.
University of South Carolina president Harris Pastides, meanwhile, asked community members to pledge that they would ensure their rideshare vehicle and driver details aligned with information from the app, and make a habit of asking the driver, “What’s my name?” before entering the vehicle.
An Uber spokeswoman, in a statement sent to MarketWatch at the time, said the company had been “working with local law enforcement to educate the public about how to avoid fake rideshare drivers” since 2017.
The company launched a social-media awareness campaign to “Check Your Ride” — in other words, make sure the car’s license plate, make and model, as well as the driver, match up with what the app says. It also said it planned to buy college-paper ads to promote a “Check Your Ride” PSA, promote its in-app safety center to U.S. riders, and remind riders during pickup of the “Check Your Ride” steps through push notifications.
Lyft, the company’s main competitor, did not respond to a request for comment at the time about the heightened attention to rideshare safety.
One man posed as an Uber driver using a fake sign he bought online, authorities said
Josephson’s fatal mixup became the latest worst-case rideshare scenario to make headlines. A Brooklyn woman told PIX11 News in April, for example, that her Uber driver had physically assaulted her and hurled a homophobic slur after she asked him to take a different route home. Less than a month earlier, an ex-Lyft driver in Georgia convicted of raping an intoxicated female passenger in 2016 received a 35-year prison sentence.
And Josephson’s alleged assailant isn’t the only bad actor to have been mistaken for a rideshare professional: Police charged an Alabama man with kidnapping in March after finding an unconscious college student in the back seat of his car. He had posed as an Uber driver, authorities said, and used a fake Uber sign he purchased online. In June, police charged him with new crimes related to two additional victims.
While public data on these incidents remains scant, an April 2018 review by CNN of law-enforcement records found that at least 103 U.S. Uber drivers and 18 Lyft LYFT, +5.36% drivers had been accused of sexual assault or abuse of riders over the previous four years. Representatives for Uber and Lyft told CNN that safety was their top priority.
Who’s Driving You?, a campaign by the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association, tallied “four previously unreported deaths, 92 sexual assaults and 12 physical assaults” during the summer of 2017, the majority of which involved Uber drivers.
The biggest mistake passengers make, according to one expert
Harry Campbell, the founder of The Rideshare Guy and author of The Rideshare Guide who drives for Uber and Lyft, said the biggest mistake he sees passengers make is treating the pickup process “very casually.” He recalled some passengers forgetting whether they’d hailed an Uber or Lyft, and others getting into the wrong car by accident.
“It’s sort of funny when it happens in the moment,” Campbell told MarketWatch in April. “I could just see how things could go wrong if passengers got into the car of someone who was trying to take advantage of that situation.”
The simplest way for rideshare passengers to stay safe is by double-checking their driver’s license plate against the app, Campbell said. “Verifying the license plate is 100% going to work,” he said. “That’s the foolproof way.” But he admits many passengers may not take that step. Additional precautions include asking the driver for his or her name, he said, and verifying the car’s make and model.
Uber and Lyft could also take some small steps in “nudging the passenger in the direction of checking for the license plate,” he suggested. That might mean giving riders a stronger reminder in the form of a push notification to verify their driver’s license plate during pickup, or having drivers remind passengers to ask for their names when they enter the car.
Uber offers its own list of rider safety tips, including waiting indoors until the driver has arrived, sitting in the back seat when traveling alone, and sharing trip details with friends or family through the app so they can track the trip and view an ETA. The company has announced multiple new safety features in the past year, including an emergency 911 button, 911 integration and a dedicated place for safety information. Uber also said it would re-run criminal and motor-vehicle checks on an annual basis, and monitor new criminal offense data. Lyft, for its part, offers a 24/7 “critical response line.”
Some rideshare apps cater to women worried about safety
Female-focused rideshare companies have also sprung up in response to the industry’s safety concerns. The Southern California-based See Jane Go, which shuttered in January of 2018 due to a lack of funding, catered to female riders with female drivers.
And the Boston-based company Safr, which came under legal scrutiny for its initial all-female business idea, called Chariot for Women, allows both riders and drivers to choose the preferred gender of their driver. The service says it’s “focused on the safety and empowerment of women.” It includes an “SOS” button that allows riders to contact 911, Safr or a pre-determined emergency contact; color-matching for both the rider and driver to verify upon pickup; and a “command center” that tracks rides in real-time.
While Campbell said he would be surprised to see Uber and Lyft move in that gender-specific direction, he suggested there could be a big market for such services — based on conversations he’d had with women on both the passenger and driver sides.
“Female drivers tell me all the time that when they get a female passenger it makes them feel very reassured, especially late at night,” he said. “Giving riders that option, I think, could be really beneficial. … A lot of the passengers might even pay more for it too.”
Shares of Uber have been down 12.98% over the past three months; shares of Lyft have been down .35% during that period. Meanwhile the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been up 9.28% and the S&P 500 Index has been up 9.9%.
This story was originally published April 5, 2019, and was updated on Nov. 25, 2019.
