Now, the companies say they are ready to change that, announcing the creation of an industry sharing safety program Thursday to relay information about drivers and delivery people deactivated from their platforms over the most serious safety incidents. These incidents will include sexual assaults -- which range from non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part to rape -- and physical assaults resulting in fatalities. The program will be managed through a third-party consumer reporting agency called HireRight.Uber and Lyft said they will share information on deactivations of this nature beginning Thursday, as well as past deactivations of the sort dating back to 2017. The program will also be open to other transportation and delivery network companies for a minimal fee if they comply with requirements, including how to classify incident reports, as laid out by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center's taxonomy.
"I've often said that safety should not be proprietary," Uber's chief legal officer, Tony West, told CNN Business this week. "While Uber and Lyft are fierce competitors on many fronts, I think on this safety issue we agree that folks should be safe no matter what ridesharing platform they choose."
The news comes more than a year after Uber released its first safety transparency report in response to a 2018 CNN investigation into rideshare drivers in the United States who had been accused of sexually assaulting or abusing their passengers.
Uber's report revealed that it had received 464 reports of rape on its platform, among 5,981 reports of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018. In the report, Uber said it was "committed to finding a way to share the names of drivers who have been banned from our platform for the most serious safety incidents with our ridesharing peers."
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