When Emily ordered a trip through a shared travel application after going out with friends six years ago, she thought she was making a safe decision.
Then, its driver sexually assaulted her.
Two years after the driver declared himself guilty of sexual aggression, Emily decided to sue him and the travel company shared in a civil court. Demand still makes its way through the judicial system.
“I trusted the shared travel company to do home safe and, instead, they put me in a car with my rapist,” Emily said. Radio-Canada has changed its name and has not appointed the shared travel company to protect Emily’s identity.
In the last two years, at least five shared travel drivers have been arrested in relation to sexual assault or convicted in the Metropolitan Area of Toronto and Hamilton, according to police data.
But it is not clear how complete that number is. This is because, despite having done so for the United States, companies such as Uber and Lyft have not published data on alleged sexual aggressions in Canada.
Several lawyers say that companies should be more transparent about such cases.
“They are promoting a safe service,” said Toronto’s lawyer, Simona Jellinek. “Show us how sure it is. Deme it.”
Meanwhile, the headquarters based in Toronto, Darryl Singer, says he has worked in about a dozen cases in the last five years that involve someone demanding a shared travel company after an alleged sexual assault. Several cases are ongoing, Toronto told CBC in May.
Most of his cases are in the GTA, he said. In 2019, one of its customers, a woman from Toronto, sued Uber and a driver for $ 5 million. The demand was resolved, he said.
The reports involving Ridajares have increased “markedly” since 2020, said Toronto Police spokeswoman Nadine Ramadan, in an email to CBC Toronto.
“These increases are more pronounced than the general trends of assaults and sexual violations throughout the city,” he wrote, added that the increase can coincide with an expanded use of shared travel services since 2020.
Uber, LYFT promotes several security features
Uber and Lyft condemned incidents of sexual aggression in emails to Radio-Canadá.
Both platforms provide security measures in the application. Uber allows passengers to share the details of their trip with another person and have an emergency assistance button that allows users to call 911.
Lyft also offers an locations exchange function. The company says that “it monitors trips for unusual activities, such as long stops or route deviations.”
“If we notice anything about your trip, we will contact you to see if you need help,” says Lyft on your website.
But Emily said these measures gave him a “false sense of security.”
“Unfortunately, there are still bad people out there who also use these applications,” he said.
Driver detection should be improved, says the lawyer
Lyft has “incorporated a series of characteristics to promote security” for passengers, including detection processes for drivers, said spokeswoman Allison Guthrie.
Meanwhile, Uber spokeswoman Gabriela Confoco-Cuesada said that the company “constantly seeks[ing] New ways to improve security … before, during and after each trip. ”
But Singer said that companies should do more to evaluate their drivers.
People who want to drive for Uber or Lyft in Toronto have to follow a series of steps, starting with a history verification made by companies. Then, the companies request a license on behalf of the drivers. The city reviews the criminal record verification of the applicant and the management registration before issuing the license.
A reason for rejection for a license is the conviction for “any sexual crime under the Criminal Code in the previous ten years,” according to the city’s website.
If the city realizes any breach of its detection criteria, it notifies the companies and “they are required to immediately withdraw the driver,” said the spokesman for the city, Shane Gerard.
But with almost 80,500 people licensed for driving for shared travel companies in the city in December 2024, according to a recent report, a criminal record verification is not enough, Singer said.
“It is possible that someone has never had a criminal record before precisely because they have never been convicted,” he said.
Singer wants to see the applicants interviewed before starting to drive.
“I can’t imagine in my office hire someone based on an exchange of text messages through an application,” he said.
Companies have not promised to launch Canadian data
The singer said that the city of Toronto “might” require that shared travel applications publish sexual aggression data annually to continue operating, as they have done in the United States.
The city has published data from shared travel companies before, such as the number of trips made in the city.
But while passengers can file a complaint on the city’s website against a driver with respect to the conditions of their vehicle, any complaint related to driver’s behavior must appear directly before the company.
According to Statistics Canada data, more than half of the criminal charges established by the Police in Ontario never come to trial, according to data from Statistics Canada. As Sarah Macmillan of CBC reports, the numbers paint a worrying image of the justice system of the province.
Neither the city staff nor the office of Mayor Olivia Chow responded when asked if they had asked the Toronto travel companies to share data of sexual aggression.
Meanwhile, a Transport Canada spokesman said that the Federal Department has no participation in the regulation or supervision of shared travel operations.
In his latest US report. UU., Lyft said that 2,651 cases of alleged sexual assault by drivers and passengers were reported to the company between 2020 and 2022. That is equivalent to one case for every 540,000 trips, he said.
Lyft said he will continue to monitor the situation in Canada, but did not promise to publish Canadian data.
Uber said that 2,717 alleged cases of sexual aggression by drivers and passengers in the United States were reported to the company between January 2021 and December 2022, one case for every 700,000 trips, according to the company’s latest report.
An Uber spokesman said the company “will continue to evaluate future opportunities to publish additional reports.”
Both companies said that cases of sexual assault are extremely rare.
Burlington’s lawyer, Laura Hillyer, who has represented victims of sexual aggression in shared travel vehicles, said that shared travel companies should be more transparent in the release of data on all alleged crimes during trips.
“If I go for dinner with my friends in the city and I choose walking alone in the dark, I know what risk I am taking,” he said.
“I don’t think people completely appreciate the risk they are taking when they get to the shared trip because I don’t think the risks are completely revealed.”
Meanwhile, for Emily, while taking your case to court it has not been an easy task, she says that speaking has taught her an important lesson.
“I learned that I am stronger than I thought I was and more resistant than I thought it could be,” he said. “And unfortunately, I’m not alone.”
