Uber has disclosed that 3,000 sexual assaults were reported on its U.S. rides last year, the first time it has revealed the scale of the safety problem that exists at ride-hailing companies.
The reported assaults were part of Uber’s long-awaited safety study, published Thursday amid widespread and ongoing criticism of its safety practices and pressure to increase its transparency about the issue.
In the lengthy report, which divides sexual misconduct into 21 categories but focuses on the five most serious, Uber said it recorded 235 rapes last year and thousands more reports of assault that could involve unwanted touching, kissing or attempted rape. The reports involved drivers and passengers. The company tallied roughly 6,000 reports of those types of assault in 2017 and 2018.
The report also examined other safety categories, including motor-vehicle deaths and violent crimes such as physical assaults. Uber said there were 107 motor-vehicle fatalities in 2017 and 2018, with a total of 97 fatal crashes involving users on the app. The company also said there were 19 fatal physical assaults over the same time period, during which it said an average of more than 3.1 million trips took place each day.