Updated Oct 27
The largest danger involves female drivers facing male passengers.
This isn’t socially recognised, due to denial and stigma and stereotypes regarding women working at jobs in male-dominated fields.
Many years ago, I spent a year in the taxicab industry, in a large American city.
I had to pass government screening for competence, and driving record, and criminal record, that would have rejected many people. Long before “Uber” and it’s ilk hired anyone and everyone, raking in signup fees.
And can confirm that, it is dangerous, and no “decent” person, either male or female, has any empathy towards the working poor people who resort to this.
That said, the Uber corporation has severe issues with lack of screening for drivers, including employing people with serious criminal records. Regular taxicab companies exploit the drivers, but Uber is even worse. They are a scam and a danger. They will take your money, and then look the other way, when there is an accident, or a crime against either the driver or the passenger. Nobody cares about the violent crimes against the working-poor drivers.
Uber and it’s ilk totally fail to screen their drivers, fail to have legitimate insurance arrangements, and scam everyone involved, as a sharemarket rort.
Some interpretations are that, Uber is apparently NOT really even in the transportation business. It’s real product is the phone app for dispatching, the media hype, and the sucking in of hundreds of millions of dollars of investor cash.
Uber has previously had a major issue, where they were claiming to do criminal records checks of applicants (and charging money from them), while those checks were never conducted. Leading to employment of drivers with serious criminal histories.
Uber has a corporate culture of sexual harassment and misconduct by and towards employees, including being encouraged by their founder and former CEO.
Uber openly violates city/county/state regulations, including safety regulations. This includes their unlicensed testing of driverless vehicles, which got that programmed kicked out of California, because they were evading requirements to register and to report accidents and near-misses.
Uber unfairly competes with, and threatens the livelihood of, properly screened and licensed taxicab workers.
On the other hand…
Passengers in legal, licenced city taxicabs love to feel offended by dollar amount of the fares. And love to blame the legal, licenced, screened, working-poor drivers. While being oblivious to the high overhead costs and danger level to those individuals.
It is a tragedy when a random off-the-street, middle-class, coddled passenger feels “uncomfortable” with a cautious or even paranoid driver, but nobody cares when a properly licensed and screened female city taxicab driver has a male passenger holding a knife to her neck.
The legitimate, city-county-licenced industry is bad enough, but Uber and it’s ilk is even worse.