Uber taps Chicago, a company rewards gig workers, and Lyft releases its first safety report. LegalRideshare breaks it down.
A week of highs and lows… Uber’s new offices, gig workers as owners, safety on the move, and unfortunate confrontations. It’s all here in This Week in Rideshare.
MONDAY 10/18/21
A confrontation with passengers led to an Uber driver getting seriously injured. Fox news reported:
An Uber driver in Colorado was stabbed several times by a group of juveniles early Monday morning after he told them he couldn’t fit them all in his vehicle, police and reports said.
The victim, who FOX 31 Denver identified as an Uber driver, was called to the 2100 Block of South Broadway Street in Denver just before 12:15 a.m. local time, police said. He arrived to find five people, described as “juvenile males.”
TUESDAY 10/19/21
Uber taps the Windy City for its new freight operations. Chicago Tribune reported:
Delayed and downsized by the pandemic, Uber opened its sprawling new office space at the redeveloped Old Post Office, which will serve as the headquarters for its Uber Freight business and Chicago operations.
The San Francisco-based ride-share company cut the ribbon on its ninth-floor office Tuesday, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and other top executives touting a new home and expansive future in Chicago.
WEDNESDAY 10/20/21
An incident occurred Wednesday where a passenger was dragged by her Uber driver. Boston.com reported:
Boston police are investigating an incident from Sunday where a woman was dragged in South Boston by an SUV after reportedly trying to retrieve her phone from the vehicle, an Uber. The entire incident was caught on video by a dash cam of another rideshare driver, who was driving another passenger.
In the video, the woman and a man are seen standing by the SUV before it takes off. The woman can then be seen running alongside the vehicle before being flung to the side. The man runs down the street to follow the car and is seen at one point in the video clinging to the driver’s door. According to Ed Booth, who captured the incident via dash cam, the driver got out and argued before driving away.
THURSDAY 10/21/21
A new startup is trying to boost gig worker moral with stocks. TechCrunch reported:
Moves, a Toronto-based gig economy fintech startup, wants to reward gig workers with stocks from the companies for which they drive. The first version of the Moves Collective, as the startup’s new service is called, launches on Thursday with Uber stocks available and then quickly offer Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub shares, says CEO of Moves, Matt Spoke.
Moves’s thesis is this: If gig workers become shareholders, they might feel more economic alignment to the platforms they work for. Furthermore, if enough workers own stocks in these companies through the Moves Collective, they might be able to form a voting bloc in the future and actually influence company decisions. Moves says it already owns a “significant and growing stake” in these companies, all of which are common shares with voting rights.
FRIDAY 10/22/21
Lyft released its first safety report. Claims Journal reported:
Lyft Inc. recorded more than 4,000 claims of sexual assault from 2017 to 2019, according to a newly released safety report.
Four people were killed in physical assaults in 2019, and 49 people died in Lyft collisions at a rate lower than the national average for automotive fatalities, according to the company.
The rate of sexual assaults to total trips decreased 19% in 2019 from 2017, Lyft said. “While safety incidents on our platform are incredibly rare, we realize that even one is too many,” Jen Brandenburger, Lyft’s head of policy development and research, wrote in a blog post.
LegalReader thanks our friends at LegalRideshare for permission to republish this piece. The original is found here.
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