Uber's entire business model is, essentially, supplying unlicensed taxi services. I am honestly surprised it works as well as it does.
If anything, I would feel safer in an Uber than a taxi because there's a clear record of who is in that car.
In theory. I can't speak about Uber; but, with Lyft, I've seen husbands driving instead of their wife (and vice versa). According to some drivers, this is not uncommon. I had one driver who's name, according to the app, was "Google."
I've also had a number of drivers tell me that many riders don't have their picture on their account.
At some level, they are attempting to avoid bad press, but their methods go far beyond "Washing our hands of it, not my problem" and into "Trying to obfuscate and cover up crimes so that we can't be tied to them".
Source: Worked at Uber for about six months and quit in disgust.
None of this is to exonerate the NYT for their biased reporting, because the crime rates in conventional taxes are almost as bad, and closure rates are worse. It's an ugly industry that Uber could have cleaned up but decided the pragmatic approach was to spin doctor.
They make the driver fill some information in an online form and occasionally send an image that is supposed to be a selfie. Certainly in my account I can see a record of what various people who drove me claimed were their names, but that's not really the same thing as identifying them.
The article does not compare or contrast the rates to other industries, situations or just living life in general. My comment is not to absolve Uber, but rather point out that the article does not do a good job at proving that Uber is any more dangerous than a variety of other places/activities/things.
Just take a cursory look at the front page, and see how much of it is hard, actual news. Even in the Business section, you'll find words like "cult-like" and "drowning in debt". It's very difficult to believe that this is a newspaper of record.
Uber is certainly not capable of dishing out the kind of punishment these scumbags deserve, nor is it capable of providing due process to defendants.
