‘Get Out or I’ll Tear Your Clothes’: Uber Driver to B’luru Woman

The woman complained about Uber’s safety measures after a press of the ‘safety’ button did nothing to help her.

This is not the first time Uber is facing trouble. Representative image.

(Photo Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons/Sandeepnewstyle)

An employee of a private firm based out of Bengaluru, detailed the harassment she allegedly faced on Twitter on Monday, 5 August, when she boarded an Uber cab on the previous Saturday night.

In a series of tweets, the woman said she boarded a cab in east Bengaluru but had to disembark somewhere in central Bengaluru following an altercation with the driver.

(Photo: Screenshot of woman’s note on Twitter)

The user’s complaint was that, after feeling unsafe in her cab, when she pressed the ‘safety’ button in the app, instead of generating a call from Uber to her, it generated a call from Uber to the driver, allowing the driver to explain himself and giving her no chance to make her complaint. She characterised this safety feature as “extremely messed up”.

Calling the incident ‘the most traumatising experience of my life’, the user detailed how she had been forced to get out of the cab after the driver allegedly threatened to “tear her clothes” if she didn’t exit immediately. She also wrote about how she was forced to wait for 15 minutes late at night while her friends arranged another pickup for her, after Uber’s customer support failed to fetch her another ride.

In a response to a query by The Quint, Uber said that they had been ‘in touch with the rider’ and that the driver partner’s access to the app had been suspended until further investigation.

No Resolution Yet

Even hours after posting the tweet and tagging Uber in her complaints, the user tweeted again on Sunday evening, questioning why she had still not been contacted by the Uber team.

(Photo: Screenshot)

According to a source close to the complainant, she is worried about the driver somehow finding out her address and coming after her after the aggression he displayed in the cab.

The source told The Quint that the complainant was shaken by the incident and would only speak out once she was assured of Uber’s proactiveness in addressing her complaint. The source also confirmed that Uber had gotten in touch since the follow-up tweet but “no solution had been provided yet”.

The original tweet has since been retweeted 4.5k times since it was first posted.

‘Unacceptable, Driver Partner’s App Access Suspended’: Uber

Responding to The Quint’s query, an Uber spokesperson said:

(Photo: The Quint)

This is not the first time that Uber has run into trouble with disgruntled customers in the IT capital.

Last September, a passenger was forced to drive himself home after an inebriated Uber driver was reportedly unable to stay up and drive. In another incident, an angry driver reportedly locked a family inside the vehicle, after they refused to cancel their ride and give him cash for the ride instead, in order to get out of him having to pay Uber a commission.

However, a Deccan Herald report from last year also pointed out the ‘vulnerable’ condition of cabbies following an incident in which a driver was abducted and robbed.

(With inputs from Deccan Herald)