Uber Has A Murder Problem

Uber Has A Murder Problem

The popular livery and union-busting service Uber is catching heat in Brazil because its drivers keep getting robbed and murdered. This isn’t the first time that the company has struggled with murder in its ranks. But holy crap, a recent report has some horrifying new details.

Reuters just published a lengthy exposé about how Uber’s new cash payment service coincided with an uptick in crime — including robbery and murder — against drivers. Because Uber does not show a driver the destination of a potential passenger before they accept the ride, some find themselves in favelas late at night.

Take the account of Brazil’s first Uber murder after the introduction of cash payments, which sounds simply horrifying. Reuters reports:

A few blocks from their destination, the passengers — who hailed the ride on the Uber app with a false name — drew two blue-handled kitchen knives. They repeatedly stabbed the 52-year-old driver and drove away with his black SUV as he lay bleeding in the road. Two of his fatal wounds were so deep police would first mistake them for bullet holes.

The driver died from his wounds.

So what’s to be done? Well, since Uber is a profit-hungry capitalist enterprise, you can go ahead and assume that it wants to keep accepting cash payments — as Reuters noted, “demand took off” when they were introduced. This method has proven successful in developing countries where credit cards are less common, even though it makes it much tougher to track down passengers if they, for instance, rob and murder a driver. Nevertheless, cash payments account for some 30 per cent of Uber’s business in Brazil and a substantial portion of business in the rest of Latin America and Asia, according to Reuters.

But at this point, we shouldn’t be surprised that Uber has a murder problem. As long as the service have been around, both drivers and passengers have found ways to unleash brutal attacks on each other. There have been Uber-related murders everywhere from California to Detroit, an assault with a hammer in San Francisco, and of course, that widely covered incident involving a drunk Taco Bell executive beating the crap of his driver in a parking lot.

It took Uber five months to implement policies in Brazil that would help the company keep track passengers using social security numbers. This happened six days after Reuters contacted Uber with questions about multiple murders and robberies. Yet, it only takes a few seconds to delete your Uber account for good and support more responsible companies that have less of a murder problem.

We reached out to Uber about this murder problem but had not heard back at time of writing.

[Reuters]


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