New York has by far the largest fleet of for-hire cabs in the country, with more than 86,000 licensed vehicles including taxis, Uber vehicles and livery cabs. The driver pleaded not guilty to rape and other charges.Īnother woman was attacked by a driver who displayed an Uber sign, only to discover he wasn’t a member of the popular ride-hailing app. In one case, prosecutors said, the driver of a taxi picked up a woman in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood, locked the doors, pulled over, climbed into the back seat with her and raped her. In New York, most of the cases last year involved women out at restaurants and bars late at night who hailed a taxi alone to go home. In New Orleans, a cab driver was sentenced to five years for rape. A driver in London was sentenced to 8 months for sex assault. In India, an Uber driver was sentenced to life in prison for raping a passenger. It’s actually far more likely for a driver to be attacked at least three were killed in New York last year alone.īut instances of attacks by drivers have grabbed international headlines in recent months. The figure is small, considering there are 440,000 yellow cab rides and up to 120,000 Uber rides in the city every day. The NYPD noted that the 14 reported rapes of women in cars for hire was out of 164 reported “stranger rapes,” and among 1,439 total reported rapes last year. Police said the suggestion was simply a safety measure for women, who are overwhelmingly the victims of such assaults. “If you decide to go out and enjoy yourself in any borough and you get into a cab, there is an expectation that you arrive at your destination safely.” “We want to ensure that when we’re working with our police department, we’re not encouraging women to implement buddy systems, but rather saying, ‘You have a right to be safe,’” City Councilwoman Vanessa Gibson said at the news conference. One proposal would require taxis and car services like Uber to have a back-seat panic button that could summon the police to a passenger in trouble. “It’s not the victim’s fault.”Īt a news conference Monday, city politicians and women’s rights advocates demanded more concrete measures to combat cabbie rapes. “It’s the idea that somehow we have a hand in this,” said Jamie Lopez, 20, who works in retail and often takes cabs late at night because she finds them safer than the subway. Some women who spoke to The Associated Press about taxi safety said Bratton’s suggestion smacked of sexism.
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