> Uber has built a safe way to get into a stranger's car
The people who have been attacked by Uber drivers wouldn't agree with that statement. I think Uber/Lyft/etc. are largely safe, but their standards are pretty low, and for a long time they weren't even doing proper criminal background checks on prospective drivers. Agreed that the old taxi system was entirely broken and needed to get shaken up, but Uber was hardly a responsible darling in all this.
While I also agree Uber is no darling, the proper comparison would be between driver-on-passenger assaults for ridesharing services versus traditional taxi. How do they stack up?
It's not immediately obvious which one would be safer. In theory ridesharing yields a more extensive data/evidence trail (driver identity, passenger identity, GPS history, etc), making assault much harder to get away with; this would seem to be a better deterrent than relatively anonymous cab rides.
I did a bit of googling and can't find any hard numbers that compare the two types of transport from a driver-on-passenger assault POV. I would welcome cited figures anyone else might have.
When you say "doing proper criminal background checks", do you mean "making sure no one who has re-entered society after serving their sentence is allowed to work for them"?
Countries with good rehabilitation also do this, certain types of sexual crimes have high recidivism rates despite the best efforts. There's rehabilitation and there's realism and protecting the public, there's a balance.
On my local Nextdoor someone posted recently about a trial being finished and warning that his wife had been sexually assaulted in a nearby area. The actual newspaper story was a little heart-breaking, on the one hand the guy clearly had been trying to improve and felt remorse, on the other he's a menace to women, he literally walked up to the women and put his hand up her skirt.
There are a lot of careers in which criminals can and should be given a chance to reenter society without unacceptably compromising public safety. Driving taxis is not one of them.
The people who have been attacked by Uber drivers wouldn't agree with that statement. I think Uber/Lyft/etc. are largely safe, but their standards are pretty low, and for a long time they weren't even doing proper criminal background checks on prospective drivers. Agreed that the old taxi system was entirely broken and needed to get shaken up, but Uber was hardly a responsible darling in all this.