Analytical Essay on Taxi Service: Work in Uber as a Taxi Driver

Uber is a free-to-download a mobile app that provides a taxi service to anyone that has the app. However, they do not own any taxis. All of their taxi drivers are crowd-sourced and own their own cars from which they work. Uber has created many jobs, as a matter of fact, they have 3 million drivers globally as well as having 75 million riders globally. However, with as many as 75 million riders there will always be interactions between riders and drivers. And in rare instances, the driver may be prone to doing illegal things, most likely assault of some sort.

Uber is a well-known taxi-service that gives over 15 million rides every day. The people who give these rides can be anybody that has installed the Uber app on their phone and has sent the right paperwork to Uber as well. This means that almost anybody can join Uber. In 2018 there were over 3000 reported sexual assault cases. In the past, there have been verbal and physical assaults on passengers being caught on video. This has terrified many people from using the app. But the assaults being caught on video have been what brought this problem to light. Videos of verbal altercations going viral have been seen across the country by many causing fear for using the taxi-service. Many kids as well use Uber which parents trust and after looking at the statistics may not let their kid use this app anymore. This has caused many problems for the company and people who do not own cars and want to get to a certain destination. Here are some ways we thought of what Uber can do to make their app better and much safer to use.

Uber allows strangers to pick you up and take you to places such as your home, friends house, or places you tend to go to often. The problem here is that they aren’t professionals that have taken a course like other taxi drivers that take courses to learn the job properly and get training. Also, an Uber driver can be anybody and people take advantage of this to sexually assault others. An Uber driver can easily take advantage of a person that has been drinking and do whatever they want with them because that person is relying on the Uber driver to take them home. The problem is that an Uber driver is not a professional and can’t be trustworthy because they have been licensed to be a taxi driver by an app so it is not deemed safe to trust the strangers on Uber. Uber portrays itself as a safe mode of transportation, especially if they have been drinking but that is not always the case.

A resident of Washington, DC, is suing Uber after she was sexually assaulted by one of the ride-hail company drivers. The victim was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver named Raul E. Rodriguez Vasquez on April 1st, 2018 She later told a social worker, who contacted the police. They collected DNA evidence linking Vasquez to the assault. He pleaded guilty to one count of sexual abuse and is currently in jail. In this most recent case, the anonymous victim is seeking $10 million in damages from both Vasquez and Uber to compensate for the physical and emotional injuries she sustained from the assault.

This is a prime example of what can happen when you get into a vehicle with just anybody. This is not the only case there hundreds and thousands more just like this, and this is not even the worst one, many people have lost lives and loved ones just because they go into an uber with someone they never met in their life, now this is what we think what Uber should have done to prevent this situation from even occurring in the first place.

Uber should somewhat have an idea of who is driving people around in their business, so what we think Uber should do is check for criminal records, know where the person is coming from, what he or she was doing before becoming an uber driver and more, all these things are very important background checks before recruiting anyone to do business under your company name. Uber is very relaxed when allowing people to become Uber drivers, there are only some minimum requirements, such as your age, if your car is suitable to drive and insurance, knowing these things is not enough to work under a billion-dollar company. All people know about their Uber driver is their name and the number of stars he or she has. People would rather see a little about the person than the number of stars the driver has. It would also be better to have an in-person interview to get to know the person better. If the person is “off”, then something can be done about it. This method can filter out people that have a possibility to harm a driver lowering the number of assaults on Uber passengers. However, this would take an incredible amount of time and also many resources and lots of time.

Our second option is adding a safety feature like a flashing light similar to something like how taxis have a blinker at the back of the car, where it says “if blinking call 911”, but for this one, once you click the button it will send help wherever you are, so it tracks where your location is and send in help if you are feeling unsafe. Also, this feature alerts anyone that is driving nearby because the flashing light indicates to nearby drivers and passersby to the fact that the person in the car is in danger. This is extremely important and gives riders a safe and positive feeling when getting to their destination. Also if people think their driver is about to do something negative towards them or if a driver is making you feel uncomfortable they can always press the button to send a distress call to Uber and people nearby. This has been proven to be effective because another taxi-service provider (Beck Taxi) has the same feature for the driver so that the driver can alert people nearby if they are in trouble. So the same thing is used for a passenger to help them get out of an unsafe situation. This method would be very effective in alerting people about the danger you are in but will cost lots of money to install into a car and will also take time. But that could be fixed by having a team that travels to Uber drivers and install the lights in a fast manner allowing for them to start work quickly and not travel to places that are far away to get an installation of the lights.

Another solution to this problem would be having a safety rating on Uber drivers’ profiles to show how safe people felt with them. This could help riders to gauge whether or not they should get into a car with them or not. This solution helps to alert others about what their experience was like in their car. The problem is that this could be abused and cause drivers to just lower the driver’s rating for no reason.

Of the three solutions given, the best one would be the flashing lights activated by a switch near the passenger’s seat. The other solutions would be effective, but this solution has been used by taxi drivers before and has been proven to be effective. In cases where a taxi driver had been held at gunpoint, he flicked the switch and actually alerted a police officer that was nearby, that officer arrested the passenger attempting to rob the driver and effectively saved the driver from harm. The only downside of this is that if the driver takes a passenger to a secluded place then the only thing they can do is call the police because nobody will be around to see the flashing lights.