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Indian Woman Sues Uber In the US Over Alleged New Delhi Taxi Rape
"Uber has been the subject of controversy all around the globe," notes new submitter yuetteasvy (3999351), who supplies this story from Reuters about one of the reasons for that controversy: An Indian woman who says she was raped by an Uber driver while she was traveling in his cab in December is suing the San Francisco–based online firm in a U.S. federal court in California, claiming it failed to put in place basic safety procedures while running its car service in India. In her lawsuit, filed on Thursday, the New Delhi woman called the app-based service the "modern day equivalent of electronic hitchhiking." The unidentified plaintiff also calls for Uber to overhaul its safety practices, and seeks unspecified damages in the case, according to Reuters. The news agency quoted Uber as saying that it's "deepest sympathies remain with the victim of this horrific crime." Earlier, the woman was reported to have enlisted the services of Douglas Wigdor, a high-profile U.S. lawyer who represented Nafissatou Diallo, the New York City hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney's office went on to drop all charges against Strauss-Kahn, while a civil suit was settled out of court.
If they refuse to play by the same rules, then they have a hard time claiming their process is even better than the legal process they're supposed to use, without actually doing an almost perfect job.
Once they start following the same rules and checks as taxis, then if there is a problem all we have to ask is, "are they any worse than taxis?"
When it is a group that is in ongoing violation of the regulations, I just don't see why they qualify for the protection offered by having complied with the process. After all, that is the taxi company's excuse; background checks are regulated, and they did the checks that are supposed to work.
And yet the state by releasing him seems to have thought he wasn't much of a danger.
The state has very very limited powers. Democratic states like India cannot just lock people up because they feel like it. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" means that there should be quite a few dangerous people out there. That is the reason why taxi companies and other jobs with responsibilities are regulated and require background checks.
The wierd way that people complain about the state not protcecting them at the same time as trying to talk away all regulation power from the state shows some kind of really strong mental dissonance.