Woman raped by an Uber driver in Delhi | Hacker News Reader

Woman raped by an Uber driver in Delhi

telegraphindia.com

12 pointsskbohra1235 comments

This isn't surprising. Uber is scaling so quickly and in the race to get more cars on the road it's avoiding proper driver background checks. These are important hires that should be more thorough, in each city. As a woman, this is my worst nightmare. I only ride lyft now because I know the drivers spend time with Lyft's staff and there is a vetting process.

And how would you even do a background check on a Delhi driver? Its not like India has that infrastructure in place (nor would it be very useful if the driver never went through the Indian criminal justice system before). This is also probably has more to do with India than Uber; I wouldn't be surprised if this was a problem with taxis there in general, but since it is a foreign company, the local press will hold them to higher standards (common in most developing countries; e.g. Chinese Walmart and food safety).

And of course, given recent news, India obviously has problems in this area.

Maybe they shouldn't be expanding to places that lack the required infrastructure that enables them to operate their business safely. This is absolutely Uber's problem.

Your argument fails to consider the relative change in safety that Uber is bringing.

Maybe having Uber around decreases the risk to women. So even though you read about the story of one woman being raped, there are 20 others who weren't raped because they used Uber instead of using other forms of transportation (just as an example).

True, but that is a good argument on why they should also stay out of Cleveland and Detroit. Some places just aren't safe, or less safe, and no matter how careful you are you'll have a > 0% incidence rate, even barring all those who have previously been convicted of a crime (because there are always scummy people who haven't been caught yet). Uber, or whoever else enters a developing country, can definitely do things to make things "safer" than the local standard, and I'm all for that.

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