Uber, Lyft work together to expose abusive drivers
Ride-hailing rivals create database for complaints about sex assault, other crimes
SAN RAMON, Calif. — Uber and Lyft have teamed up to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints about sexual assault and other crimes that have raised passenger-safety concerns for years.
The clearinghouse unveiled Thursday will initially list drivers expelled by the ride-hailing rivals in the U.S. But it will also be open to other companies that deploy workers to perform services such as delivering groceries or take-out orders from restaurants
The safeguard, dubbed the “sharing safety program,” will be overseen by HireRight, a specialist in background checks. The use of a third party is aimed at addressing potential legal concerns about companies, including competitors such as Uber and Lyft, having access to information to each other’s personnel matters.
The safety program follows through on a promise that Uber made 15 months ago when it revealed that more than 3,000 sexual assaults had been reported on its service in the U.S. during 2018.
Since that revelation, San Francisco-based Uber and Lyft have been working to navigate through antitrust and privacy concerns to create a way to flag drivers who have engaged in violent or other abhorrent behavior that culminated in them being booted off their services.
Sharing the information about reported sexual assaults is considered especially important because victims of such crimes frequently don’t file formal complaints with police. That gap has opened a crack for potentially dangerous drivers to slip through routine background checks drawing upon legal records, said Jennifer Brandenburger, Lyft’s head of policy development.
To protect privacy, no passenger information will be shared in the database and the incidents that resulted in a driver’s dismissal will be listed in six broad categories: attempted non-consensual sexual penetration; non-consensual touching of a sexual body part; non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part; non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part; non-consensual sexual penetration; and fatal physical assaults.
Only “fraction of a fraction” of drivers have engaged in behavior that fall into those categories, West said. Any company with access to the clearinghouse of information could still decide to allow a driver on its service after its own investigation, West said.
The added layer of protection was hailed by the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, a victims’ rights group that has criticized the ride-hailing services for not doing more rigorous screening of their drivers. “Sexual violence thrives in secrecy,” said Scott Berkowitz, the network’s president. “Thanks to this initiative, perpetrators will no longer be able to hide or escape accountability by simply switching ridesharing platforms.”
It could also help appease U.S. lawmakers, who have criticized Uber and Lyft in the past for inadequate safety protections for their riders.
China is freeing up tens of billions of dollars for its tech industry to borrow. It is cataloging the sectors where the United States or others could cut off access to crucial technologies. And when its leaders released their most important economic plans last week, they laid out their ambitions to become an innovation superpower beholden to none.
Anticipating efforts by the Biden administration to continue to challenge China’s technological rise, the country’s leaders are accelerating plans to go it alone, seeking to address vulnerabilities in the country’s economy that could thwart its ambitions in a wide range of industries, from smartphones to jet engines.
China has made audacious and ambitious plans before — in 2015 — but is falling short of its goals. With more countries becoming wary of China’s behavior and its growing economic might, Beijing’s drive for technological independence has taken on a new urgency. The country’s new five-year plan, made public March 5, called tech development a matter of national security, not just economic development, a break from the previous plan.
The plan pledged to increase spending on research and development by 7% annually, including the public and private sectors. That figure was higher than budget increases for China’s military, which is slated to grow 6.8% next year, raising the prospect of an era of looming Cold War-like competition with the United States.
The spending pledges follow four tumultuous years during which former President Donald Trump
rattled — and angered — the Communist Party leadership under Xi Jinping by restricting access to U.S. technology for some of its corporate giants, including Huawei.
The experience has hardened a view that the United States, even under a new administration, is determined to undercut the country’s advancement and that China can no longer rely on the West for a stable supply of the technologies that help drive its economic growth.
“The United States, which has already climbed to the summit, wants to kick away the ladder,” Zhang Xiaojing, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote recently.
One sector that China has struggled with is microchips, which much of its electronics production relies on. Bewilderingly complex production has stymied Chinese businesses, which instead import the majority of the semiconductors they require.
Despite tens of billions of dollars invested, China’s domestic chip production met only 15.9% of its chip demand in 2020, barely higher than the 15.1% share
it accounted for in 2014, according to IC Insights, a U.S. semiconductor research firm.
China’s premier, Li Keqiang, last week detailed proposals to accelerate the development of high-end semiconductors, operating systems, computer processors, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
“I think they’re really worried,” said Rebecca Arcesati, a tech analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. “They know that without access to those technologies, they won’t be able to reach their targets.”
The new strategy, to a degree, rebrands the country’s previous Made in China 2025 campaign, which sought to propel it to the lead in a range of cuttingedge technologies.
“China wants to reduce its dependency on the world — not to reduce its trade and interaction but to ensure that it is not vulnerable to the kind of strategic blackmail against China that it has historically used against others,” said Daniel Russel, a former U.S. diplomat who is now a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
We have now been in this COVID-19 crisis in the Hampton Roads area for over a year. Healthcare workers, both those you see and those working behind the scenes, are doing an incredible job — a heroic job, in fact. They continue to care for high numbers of COVID-19 patients as well as all of those in need and are going the extra mile to organize and staff vaccination clinics to inoculate thousands of Virginians every day.
Now that the vaccine is here, everyone sees the end in sight. The issue is that it is not as close as everybody wishes. Another surge of the virus is still possible considering the variant strains. Even though we are all fatigued, we need to remain steadfast. There are very good public health measures in place that we know decrease the spread of the virus.
Everyone in the commonwealth’s vaccination program is doing everything they can to get our community members vaccinated. Whether it be our government, the Virginia Department of Health, local cities or the health systems, we are all working very hard under incredibly difficult circumstances. While vaccine supply is improving, we still have a very limited number of vaccines to distribute each week compared to how many are eligible in Phase 1b. Until the production and distribution of vaccine improves, the vaccination process will be challenging for everyone.
Stepping back for a moment, we must realize it is nothing short of a miracle that we are even discussing vaccinations at this point. The progress that has been made in such a short time period is astounding.
Understandably, everyone wants access to one now. We must remember that there are approximately 4.9 million Virginians in the first two phasing categories of people who are eligible to receive the vaccine. Considering the current limited national supply, we can only vaccinate a limited number of people a day across Virginia. This will improve in time, and we know what we must do until it does: wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands and avoid gatherings.
With such a limited supply, not everyone can be vaccinated when they believe they should be. People are constantly reaching out to those who are vaccinating but remember, each time one of these individuals receives a call, it distracts them from working to make things better.
Despite the constraints we are facing, I am asking everyone to work together in the following ways:
Recognize that we must work within the identified phases and guidelines, and therefore not everyone can be first in line. We must focus first on those who are most vulnerable and thus have a higher risk of becoming sick.
Understand that this will take time as we work toward vaccinating everyone in our communities.
Have grace and appreciation for those who are truly doing incredible work. Everyone is aware of the challenges and is working to make improvements.
Most importantly, continue to do what we already know works. Even though we are all fatigued, please wear a mask, avoid gatherings, wash your hands and socially distance.
We are all in this together, and we must all be patient. By working together, we will persevere.
Jordan Asher, M.D. is executive vice president and chief physician executive at Sentara Healthcare. His role concentrates on creating innovative models of care delivery as well as providing national thought leadership directed towards the future of health care.