*Uber is being used by more than 500 women across multiple states who allege they were sexually assaulted by the company’s drivers.
As reported by PEOPLE, the complaint alleges that women passengers were “kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed, and/or otherwise attacked by an Uber driver with whom they had been paired with through the Uber Application.”
The ride-share company has been aware since 2014 that “Uber drivers were sexually assaulting and raping” female passengers.
“While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences,” Adam Slater, a founding partner of Slater Slater Schulman, the law firm representing the women, said in a statement.
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“There is so much more that the company can be doing to protect riders: adding cameras to deter assaults, performing more robust background checks on drivers, creating a warning system when drivers don’t stay on a path to a destination,” Slater tells PEOPLE in a statement. “But [Uber] refuse[s] to, and that’s why my firm has 550 clients with claims against Uber and we’re investigating at least 150 more.”
The complaint notes that Uber has “failed to implement basic safety measures necessary to prevent these serious sexual assaults, which continue to occur to this day.”
In a statement to PEOPLE, an Uber spokesperson noted that “sexual assault is a horrific crime and we take every single report seriously.”
“There is nothing more important than safety, which is why Uber has built new safety features, established survivor-centric policies, and been more transparent about serious incidents,” the statement continued. “While we can’t comment on pending litigation, we will continue to keep safety at the heart of our work.”
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