Hello, friends,
More than a year ago, Markup reporter Dara Kerr started hearing reports of Uber and Lyft drivers who had been carjacked. In typical Markup fashion, she wasn’t satisfied with a few anecdotes; she wanted a larger data set.
So she started compiling a database—culled from news reports, police reports, and interviews—of how often ride-hailing drivers were being carjacked. In July 2021, she published her results: She had identified 124 carjackings that had taken place in an 18-month period, 11 of which resulted in the death of the driver.
Most reporters would have left it there. But not Dara. Like me, she is a fan of persistent monitoring—revisiting a topic again and again to ensure that powerful actors are held accountable for their actions not just once but repeatedly. At The Markup, we have used technological tools to do automated, persistent monitoring of Facebook and of privacy violations.
But for driver assaults, there was no technological way to automate monitoring. So Dara used the old-fashioned shoe-leather approach. She called drivers, she scoured police reports, she filed public record requests, and she talked to lawyers representing drivers. She also logged local news articles that cited police reports on gig worker carjackings.
Last month, she published an update: Driver assaults were still soaring. Her database revealed that more than 350 drivers had been carjacked in the past five years, resulting in 28 deaths. Ninety-two of those carjackings occurred this year.
Along the way, she stumbled on an even more stunning statistic: Uber confirmed a court document stating that its drivers had endured 24,000 alleged assaults or threats of assault by passengers in the four-year period from 2017 through 2020.
The details on those alleged assaults were scant. They were part of 80,000 pages of discovery in a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the company, which are under seal.
But some details have since emerged in a subsequent filing on July 29, which alleged that the 24,000 number didn’t include alleged sexual assaults against drivers, nor did it include rides for which the alleged assailant was a “guest rider” rather than the person whose account was used to hail the ride.
“For a variety of reasons, the data described above represent an undercount of carjackings against Uber Drivers,” reads the filing by attorneys Corrie Yackulic, Alexandra Caggiano, and Brent Rosenthal.
According to the attorneys’ calculations on drivers who are fatally assaulted during rides, that means that “Uber’s Drivers—even though they account for just a tiny fraction of the U.S. workforce—comprise nearly 1% of the total number of job-related deaths in the United States.”
The attorneys are suing Uber on behalf of the family of a driver who was fatally stabbed by two passengers during an attempted carjacking in Issaquah, Wash., in December 2020. The driver, Cherno Ceesay, was a 28-year-old immigrant from Gambia. The case is pending trial later this year in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Uber representatives told Dara that the company can’t comment on pending litigation, but that it takes the security of its drivers seriously and is constantly looking for ways to make its platform safer, such as adding an emergency button to its app. Company representatives did not respond to a request for comment on the July 29 filing, which alleged an undercount of driver carjackings and the claim that Uber drivers make up nearly one percent of job-related deaths in the United States.
The threat of violence in the ride-hail workplace is stark enough on its own. But when you add in the fact that the drivers are not considered employees by Uber or Lyft and don’t receive medical benefits, paid sick leave, or workers’ compensation, an assault becomes even more devastating.
Dara tracked the story of Lyft driver Brandy Littrell, whose passenger put a gun to her head, forced her to drive to the woods, get out of the car, and then shot her seven times before absconding with her black Dodge Journey sports utility vehicle.
Luckily, Littrell survived and was able to crawl out of the woods and find someone to call 911. She told Dara that Lyft paid some of her medical expenses but made her sign a nondisclosure agreement about how much she was given. Like many other drivers recovering from assaults, she also turned to crowdfunding to help pay for medical bills.
Uber and Lyft both publish public safety reports—but those reports include only data about fatalities and sexual assaults, not other assaults such as nonfatal shootings and carjackings.
Meanwhile, with the public largely unaware of the violence experienced by drivers, the ride-hail industry continues its aggressive lobbying on the federal level and in state legislatures, including in Washington, Massachusetts, and Illinois, to ensure that workers remain classified as independent contractors, not as employees.
In June, a group of U.S. senators sent letters to Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, and Grubhub asking them for data on worker safety incidents over the past five years. The companies declined to hand over any data. In the meantime, Dara will keep counting driver deaths and assaults. And if you or anyone you know has information to share, send your police report or official documentation of an incident to carjackingdb@themarkup.org.
As always, thanks for reading.
Best
Julia Angwin
The Markup