Predatory Rides

The illusion of safety that Uber has long peddled to its millions of users lies shattered yet again, this time following a shocking incident on a rain-streaked night in Mumbai. A 28-year-old woman, a commercial pilot, hailed an aggregator cab only to find herself entrapped in a rolling assault chamber. The driver rerouted the vehicle, stopped midway and invited two strange men into the car. What followed was an ordeal of physical assault, intimidation and trauma.

That the woman paid her fare of Rs. 530 after being molested is a grim metaphor for how platform capitalism extracts value even from victims. As per her police complaint, she was touched inappropriately, her hand twisted and silenced with threats. She was lucky - if that word can even be used - because the attackers fled when the car slowed before a police checkpoint. This was, by all available evidence, a planned assault facilitated by the very person Uber had entrusted with passenger safety.

The company’s response till now has been deafening silence with proactive reassurance of new safety protocols. The point is how can allegedly ‘vetted’ drivers go rogue in such a calculated way? Uber’s much-touted background checks, GPS tracking, and in-app safety features become meaningless when drivers turn accomplices or plan crimes themselves.

For all its glossy advertising and self-congratulatory metrics, Uber continues to operate in India, and much of the world, as a platform where accountability stops at the terms of service.

This isn’t an isolated incident. Across cities, horror stories have poured in of women forced to leap out of cabs or being stalked after rides. Meanwhile, Uber quietly continues to raise fares, citing fuel costs, regulatory burdens and ‘driver empowerment.’ What it does not raise is the quality of its grievance redressal or the reliability of its safety audits. The few who dare to report crimes face a Kafkaesque wall of automated emails, bot replies and a vacuum of real-world action.

One would imagine that a company with the technological ability to track minute-to-minute ride histories, identify driver detours and geofence every suspicious stop would rush to aid law enforcement. Instead, Uber seems more preoccupied with preserving its ‘trust score’ among investors than ensuring actual passenger trust. It still markets itself as a safe alternative for women travelling alone late at night. Uber’s business model thrives on opacity, allowing the firm to wash its hands of responsibility when things go wrong. Passengers are just ride IDs in a database to be measured by transaction value.

There is a compelling case now for India’s transport regulators to audit Uber’s operations with urgency. Safety violations should no longer be treated as PR hiccups but as criminal lapses. The company must be compelled to submit real-time data on driver behaviour, ensure human-staffed grievance systems and lose its licence for repeat safety breaches. Until then, every woman hailing an Uber at night risks playing Russian roulette with a slick app that masks horrifying risks.