Attacks on delivery drivers add fears among gig workers
NEW YORK — A homeowner fired shots at a couple’s car when they mistakenly turned onto his property while making an Instacart delivery. A Florida man was charged with killing and dismembering an Uber Eats delivery driver who brought food to his home. A woman was kidnapped and sexually assaulted while making a DoorDash delivery to a hotel.
Ride-hailing and food delivery companies say such violent episodes are exceedingly rare among the millions of trips completed each week, and point to numerous safety measures they have taken over the years.
But the three attacks, which occurred within days of each other in Florida last month, sent new ripples of fear among some app-based drivers, who say company safety policies are still better geared toward customers than workers.
Winifred Kinanda, who sometimes drives for Instacart in the San Francisco Bay Area, said she had never felt unsafe making deliveries for the grocery app until she heard about the Florida couple. That day, she got an Instacart order and constantly checked to make sure she had the right address, saying she felt particularly vulnerable as a person of color.
“It got me scared,” said Kinanda, an immigrant from Kenya who also drives for Uber and Lyft to supplement her income as an elder caregiver. “At the end of the day, being Black is really hard. People see us and think we are doing something wrong.”
A Pew Research Center poll in 2021 found that 16% of people in the U.S. had earned money from an online gig platform. That poll found 35% of them have felt unsafe while doing those jobs, including 19% who said they had experienced unwanted sexual advances.
Ride-hailing and delivery driving are among the deadliest occupations in the country, according to occupational fatalities and injury data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes delivery workers for companies like Instacart and DoorDash in its “driver/sales” category and Uber and Lyft drivers in its “taxi” category. While most deaths and injuries are from traffic accidents, the data also shows drivers are more at risk of assaults than other occupations.