First, no matter what the statistics look like, it doesn't excuse Uber's failure to report sexual assault and protect the people who have placed their trust in

First, no matter what the statistics look like, it doesn't excuse Uber's failure to report sexual assault and protect the people who have placed their trust in Uber. Second, the statistics do not support Uber being any safer: "A search query for “sexual assault” within Uber’s customer support ticketing system yielded 6,160 results, or 6,160 cases, for the period between December 2012 and August 2015. Plugging in the search term “rape” resulted in 5,827 tickets, while “assault” revealed 3,524 and “sexually assaulted” yielded 382. In the same report, BuzzFeed obtained data from the company indicating that it had received “fewer than” 170 sexual assault claims and five claims of rape over the same time span. In a response to the BuzzFeed article, Uber’s heads of communications, safety and global support attributed the thousands of results to misspellings of the word “rate,” words and names that contain the word “rape” and discussions of the issue by passengers who were not personally facing assault. A January 2015 report by the libertarian Cato Institute found ride-sharing services provided by Uber and its main competitor, Lyft Inc., to be about as safe as taking a cab, which, for drivers, was not exactly reassuring." http://www.ibtimes.com/uber-sexual-assault-statistics-ride-share-companys-safety-drivers-passengers-2494823 http://www.ibtimes.com/uber-sexual-assault-statistics-ride-s...