I am not following your defense of Uber. Let’s assume sexual assault is equally common among Uber drivers and regular taxi drivers.

It is still not material to the complaint. The complaint is that regulators are getting adequate and timely reporting from regular taxi companies so they can investigate. But not from Uber. This is leading to unnecessary safety issues for Uber riders.

I don't read it as a defense, its a necessary prerequisite question to ask to put this situation in its proper context.

Every sexual assault is horrific - but what if we look closer and discover that the rate of sexual assaults per ride from Uber is less than that from established cab services?

That completely inverts the situation and we would need to ask "What is Uber doing right, and how can the other services emulate their success?"

What if we discover they are about the same? Well, then Uber isn't anything exceptional and we have an industry-wide problem that needs addressing at all levels.

Either way, we don't even know where the real problem is if we don't start with those kinds of questions.

First, no matter what the statistics look like, it doesn't excuse Uber's failure to report sexual assault and protect the people who have placed their trust in Uber.

Second, the statistics do not support Uber being any safer:

"A search query for “sexual assault” within Uber’s customer support ticketing system yielded 6,160 results, or 6,160 cases, for the period between December 2012 and August 2015. Plugging in the search term “rape” resulted in 5,827 tickets, while “assault” revealed 3,524 and “sexually assaulted” yielded 382. In the same report, BuzzFeed obtained data from the company indicating that it had received “fewer than” 170 sexual assault claims and five claims of rape over the same time span.

In a response to the BuzzFeed article, Uber’s heads of communications, safety and global support attributed the thousands of results to misspellings of the word “rate,” words and names that contain the word “rape” and discussions of the issue by passengers who were not personally facing assault.

A January 2015 report by the libertarian Cato Institute found ride-sharing services provided by Uber and its main competitor, Lyft Inc., to be about as safe as taking a cab, which, for drivers, was not exactly reassuring."

http://www.ibtimes.com/uber-sexual-assault-statistics-ride-s...

I think it's fair to say that India is a special(ly bad) case. I'd like to see the figures for London, which is what would be relevant here. From reading that excerpt in the context of this article, it would seem that ULL is doing a really bad job. Are the statistics in that article global?

*edited

Agreed, specific concrete failures about complying with reporting laws/regulations ought to be pointed out and criticized.

Only on Hacker News will someone find a way of taking an article, with a statement that is, in essence,

> Uber failed to report a driver to the police, on the basis of sexual assault against a passenger - said driver then went on his way and just somehow found himself with another sexual assault complaint later on, against ANOTHER woman, while still as an Uber driver -- which is a grave failure on their part

and somehow magically find a systematic way of making it into

> What if.......... hear me out........ just wait....... what if Uber could be the good one here?? Let's ignore the bit about two women being sexually assulted for a second and run the statistics and find out!!!!!!

Here's my alternative position, which I hope you entertain as enthusiastically as you do statistics: Uber was wrong, and no amount of statistics about their dumbass business -- or any of those pathetic "aw dangut, but we're just a startup, doin' a disruption!!!" spiels -- negates people being assaulted, due to their gross, obvious negligence. End of story.

Yeah, let's not get rationality and reason in the way of our emotions.

Rationality and reason say that since Uber is a black cab operator, they are, just like other black cabs, legally obligated to report these incidents to the police. They have failed to do so. Case closed.

The victims contacted Uber with the assumption that Uber will carry out that responsibility. Uber failed to do so.

> Uber is a black cab operator

FWIW, Uber is not a Hackney carriage (black cab) operator (regulated since 1654). Only these are allowed to ply the streets for hire, and drivers have to pass "The Knowledge".

Uber operates as a minicab operator.

http://www.londonblackcabs.co.uk/About.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage

Well, I'm concerned about sexual assault when it happens, regardless of the cab/ride sharing service that employs the perpetrator.

IMHO, a great deal of people here only car if the perpetrator is employed by Uber.

Your argument suggests that it's acceptable to expect businesses to a race to the bottom on safety, peace of mind and quality.

Well between the established facts with Uber and some internet person's "gut feeling" I guess I would discount the latter.

I can't even believe people are making excuses for Uber like this.

In addition to this, the comment you're replying to comes across as dismissive of the issue on the basis of it being common elsewhere. In other words, "TfL are not justified in taking punitive measures against Uber for deliberately failing to report sexual assault because other places also fail to report sexual assault". Needless to say, that sort of apologia is horrific

Perhaps I'm reading more into the comment than was intended, perhaps that is the correct amount.

This is the worst kind of what-aboutism. You should be ashamed.