Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac

there were severe safety issues. The India rape scandal was just the tip of the iceberg. Unbeknownst to outsiders, Uber operations teams dealt with thousands of misconduct cases every year, including increasing instances of sexual assault. As the service grew, millions and ultimately billions of rides were taken. The power of large numbers meant that assaults and sex crimes were probably inevitable. But Uber had so lowered the bar to become a driver that people who might have been prevented from driving in the official taxi industry could easily join Uber. The problem became so significant that later, the company would create its own taxonomy of twenty-one different classifications of sexual misconduct and assault in order to properly organize the sheer number of annual incidents reported.