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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.
Will you say the same, if UBER ignored a legal requirement in the US to conduct background checks? Didn't take any action when someone who travelled in the same car as the rapist reported the rapist for making her feel uncomfortable? Liability attaches to UBER.
And who up voted you? Come on slashdot, you are better than this!
Any this is why we cannot have nice things. Any attempt at improvements and progress is immediately attacked by those who seek egoistical gain or cry for an ever bigger nanny-state, or as in this case both.
Blaming somebody's crime on Uber because they used the app is as absurd as blaming Tinder for failing to screen and monitor its users. (Although, I'm sure somebody will eventually sue for that as well).
What standing does she have to sue in the US?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The facts have been misrepresented in this case both in the Indian media and now in the U.S press. UBER did indeed ask for a police certified character certificate from the driver and the driver in turn handed them one, albeit a forged certificate. Any Indian who has worked with security agencies will tell you that Indian police character verification certificate is simply expensive paper to wipe your ass with. They have no standard format, are easily faked and are expensive to obtain no matter whom you pay - the crooks in uniform who give you one for a bribe or the crooks not in uniform who make forged copies for a fee. There is no central verification database which companies can use to authenticate one of these certificates. How then was UBER supposed to figure out that the certificate he handed them was a forged one? UBER is a boon for middle class Indians who are otherwise at the mercy of corrupt autorickshaw drivers who have no fixed metering and fleece customers based on the hour. Also, there is atleast some sort of traceability in a cab. Had the victim been raped by an autorickshaw driver, the case would still be unsolved: just another file in a mountain of open rape cases that the Indian police is too incompetent to deal with. What happened to her was terrible, but she is being an opportunist here. This is less about ushering in accountability from UBER than it is about squeezing UBER for every penny she can. It saddens me that a fellow Indian would resort to this.
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.
How did she manage to get hooked up with the same lawyer? How did a citizen living in India get connected with a high-profile lawyer in New York?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They brag about their super-awesome insurance, one real thing this case will do is test that.
If the insurance is so great, they'll pay her claim without going to trial.
If they fight it, or the insurance won't cover it, then they can shut up about that one.
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.
The entire concept of taxi regulations is intended to provide notable background checks as preventative measure and knowledge of who drivers are so if they do break the law they will know that police will know who they are.
Uber's entire business model is about saying "all these taxi regulations are unnecessary". So cases like these are important because they remind lawmakers of one of the more important reasons why taxi regulations were put in place originally.
Do proper background checks to ensure criminals and rapists are not being hired?
Did they fail to do that in this case? Neither the linked article, nor anything else I have read about this case, says anything about the driver having a prior criminal record.
And yet the state by releasing him seems to have thought he wasn't much of a danger.
Of course the state won't pay anything for its mistake, being immune from most lawsuits.
Uber on the other hand has money, so they're the target whether they're responsible or not.
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.
What flies with me is systems that work better than old corrupt systems.
Plainly Uber does a better job overall than cabs, or people would not use them.
If you are so hidebound to rules that you must follow them to your detriment, then there is no help for you I fear.
When regulations do nothing to help real people, and only restrict compassion with an old failed system - it is morally wrong to follow those regulations. I few Uber (and other companies like them) as the ultimate form of civil disobedience, and feel it is my duty as a citizen who wants to see a better world to make use of them and promote them when possible.
I have NO connection to Uber. Just a lifetime of experience with the world of Cabs that you are trying to keep us all mired in, a lifetime of poor to horrific experiences.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" means that there should be quite a few dangerous people out there.
And if you refuse to hire people because of supposedly baseless accusations made against them, you can get sued for that too!
Why should it be okay for employers to consider applicants guilty until proven otherwise?
uber isn't a taxi service
it's a ride-sharing service
by that, they mean, a person with a car, who doesn't have any interest in driving to point A or point B, drives to point A, picks up one or more people they don't know, and drives them to point B for money. But only can be paid by credit cards. And everything is arranged over the internet.
See. Completely different from a taxi service.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Bullshit. The real problem is that women aren't treated like human beings in India. That is why so many rape cases get dismissed and why it is perfectly legal for a husband to rape his wife there.
It was legal in most Western states until roughly the 1980ies/90ies.
The Soviet Union made it illegal in 1922.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
What additional regulations would Uber face if they admitted they were a taxi service?
IMO, a ride-sharing service would be something like a stranger, X, would drive another stranger, Y, from point A to B. In return, Y would get a ride from point M to N from yet another stranger, Z. No money would change hands between driver and passenger -- they are sharing rides only.
There's a lot of ignorance about the incident and about India here. I don't know whether they are legally liable in the US, but their conduct is questionable. I am utterly amazed how they have avoided harsh criticism in the twittery world of people looking desperately for something to be outraged about.
In a country notorious for being incredibly unsafe for women, they made these claims (http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/in-mumbai-it-bragged-our-quality-checks-most-rigorous/):
"“Globally and especially in India, Uber is working towards making urban transit safer for women. Let me tell you, it’s one of our biggest concerns and we’re doing a number of things to drive that agenda. “In addition to their individual employers screening them, each of our driver partners are put through a rigorous quality control process, that is implemented religiously across the country even before a partner gets behind the wheel of your vehicle. In fact screening for safe drivers is just the beginning of our safety efforts. ”Our process includes prospective and routine checks of drivers’ license and vehicle records to ensure ongoing safe driving. Unlike the taxi industry, our background checking process and standards are so detailed, it is often more rigorous than what is required to become a taxi driver. Moreover, most of our partners are introduced to us via our preferred partners, which means that someone in the system has to vouch for their track record, creating a referral system of trust.”
They hired a driver with a long criminal record based on a forged police certificate. http://timesofindia.indiatimes...? No way in hell does an unverified piece of paper count as a comprehensive background check in India, and you would damn well know that before making claims like the ones above. Especially when you specifically claim to provide a safe option for women.
Then they ignored a complaint about the same driver by a female customer days before the rape: https://au.news.yahoo.com/worl...
I cannot go on about the kind of red flags this should have set off.
Also, http://www.dnaindia.com/india/...
"Uber users can see the name, photo and phone number of the driver when booking a cab. However, in this case, the driver's phone was not registered in his name making it harder to trace him."
Their GPS tracking works via the drivers phone and the customers phone with the app installed. It's worthless, anyone who wants to circumvent it can.
They came to a country where women desperately need a safe mode of transport, made explicit claims about providing a safe service for women, and were utterly callous and negligent and deceptive.
As I said, I don't know about legal liability, but please find out more before making 'cars don't rape people, people do' posts.
All the sources I have quoted are newspapers with very decent standards of journalism. Don't go by the page 3 stuff on their sites - major Indian newspapers often have tabloid page 3 crap comparable to the worst tabloids, but their journalistic standards while far from impeccable are way better than say Fox News.
I do not know about taxis but yes garbage collectors in some areas require political connections to get the jobs. I live in thd country so i pay a private contracter but the nearest city runs its own collection service paying garbage truck drivers almost $30 an hour and the helpers aroung $20 an hour. Because of this high pay, they do not loose many employees and when the do, you almost have to know someone in the city politics in order to even get your application through for consideration.
Yes....garbage collectors get jobs through political favors.
Google "Overpaid garbage collectors."
http://globaleconomicanalysis....
http://www.answers.com/Q/Are_N...
http://www.investopedia.com/fi...
NOBODY should be given a chance to rape the FIRST TIME! Castrate everybody at birth!
It is infuriating that people get the facts of this case wrong.
1) It was rape. Period. Medical examinations after the fact confirmed it, and the rapist confessed, not only to raping this woman, but also to raping the woman in 2011, for which he was acquitted.
2) Uber India does NOT perform background checks at all, so they are liable. There can't be specualtion as to the thoroughness of their background check process, becasue there isn't one. They claim to require a commercial permit to drive a taxi, but clearly, they don't verify the validity of such a document, because not only wasn't the rapist permitted to drive local taxis, his permit was forged.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/asia/new-delhi-bans-uber-after-driver-is-accused-of-rape.html?_r=0
It is true that in Nassau County, on Long Island, New York, when Alfonse D'Amato was county commissioner, you had to be a registered Republican and contribute to the Republican party to get a job.
After D'Amato left Long Island to become Senator from New York, he was involved in a lawsuit where both sides subpoenaed documents and filed them in court.
One letter showed up in which D'Amato was discussing with another Republican how much civil servants should be required to contribute to the Republican Party to keep their jobs. They were trying to decide whether it should be 2% or 3%.
Because the statutes of limitations had expired, D'Amato couldn't be prosecuted for that.
A friend of mine who lived on Long Island told me that when his daughter applied for a summer job as a lifeguard on the beach, the person who took the application told her that in order to get the job her parents had to be members of the Republican Party. The person said that if they weren't Republicans, she might as well not waste everybody's time filling out the application, because they would check.
But I don't know if that applies to taxi drivers.