Every Eight Minutes: Uber’s Alarming Sexual Violence Problem

Summary

Summary of "Every Eight Minutes: Uber’s Alarming Sexual Violence Problem"

Podcast: The Daily
Host/Author: The New York Times
Episode: Every Eight Minutes: Uber’s Alarming Sexual Violence Problem
Release Date: August 8, 2025
Duration: Approximately 32 minutes

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Introduction

In this investigative episode of The Daily, journalist Emily Steele delves into the pervasive issue of sexual violence and harassment within Uber's ride-sharing platform. Despite Uber's public assertions of being a safe transportation option, Steele's investigation uncovers a troubling pattern of misconduct that has been largely unaddressed by the company's leadership.

The Scope of the Problem

Emily Steele reveals that Uber has been grappling with a significant number of sexual assault and harassment reports across the United States. Upon examining internal company documents, Steele discovered that Uber received a report of sexual assault or misconduct every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022, totaling 400,181 incidents[^09:04].

"Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average." – Emily Steele [09:04]

This figure starkly contrasts with Uber's public disclosures, which only accounted for 12,522 serious sexual assault cases during the same period. The broader number includes various forms of misconduct, with approximately 75% deemed less severe, such as inappropriate comments or explicit language[^10:48].

Uber's Internal Knowledge and Responses

Steele's investigation highlights that Uber was not only aware of the extensive problem but had also been actively studying it. By 2016, Uber's data scientists had identified distinct patterns associated with sexual assaults on the platform:

• Predominant Victims: Women, whether passengers or drivers.
• Timing: Incidents frequently occurred late at night and on weekends, especially near bars[^13:14].
• Perpetrators: Mostly men, including both drivers and passengers, many with prior misconduct complaints[^13:14].
• Vulnerability Factors: Intoxicated passengers were particularly at risk.

Despite recognizing these patterns, Uber’s response measures were insufficient. Steele found that while Uber had developed internal tools and strategies to mitigate these risks, the implementation and enforcement of these measures were lacking.

Attempted Safeguards and Their Shortcomings

Three primary solutions were identified within Uber's internal documents:

1. Risk Prediction Algorithms:
   Uber developed a sophisticated machine learning model to predict and score the risk of potential driver-passenger pairings. While initial testing in Los Angeles showed the model could accurately anticipate 15% of sexual assaults, the company chose not to act on these predictions. Instead of preventing high-risk pairings, Uber continued to dispatch these drivers[^16:59].

   "This model could correctly anticipate 15% of sexual assaults on trips using Uber's basic ride-hailing option." – Emily Steele [16:59]

2. Women Matching Option:
   Inspired by its introduction in Saudi Arabia, Uber piloted a feature to pair women drivers exclusively with women passengers. However, the rollout in the U.S. was delayed due to concerns over potential gender discrimination lawsuits and the low percentage of female drivers necessary for its effectiveness[^21:14].

   "Safety has ranked as one of the top reasons for prospective female drivers to not join Uber." – Emily Steele [22:23]

3. Dashcams in Vehicles:
   Implementing dashboard cameras was identified as a cost-effective method to deter misconduct. Despite recognizing their potential benefits, Uber refrained from mandating dashcams to maintain its business model, which classifies drivers as independent contractors. This classification allows Uber to avoid certain employment costs but limits its control over driver behavior[^24:37].

Legal and Ethical Implications

Uber faces approximately 3,000 lawsuits alleging liability for sexual assaults committed by its drivers. The company contends that as a platform, it should not be held responsible for the actions of independent contractors. In some instances, Uber has counter-sued alleged perpetrators, asserting violations of their contractual agreements[^26:16].

Steele questions whether Uber's reluctance to fully disclose the extent of the problem and implement comprehensive safety measures prioritizes the company's growth over passenger safety. The lack of transparency prevents riders from making informed decisions about their safety when using the service[^28:55].

Conclusion

Emily Steele's investigation paints a concerning picture of Uber's handling of sexual violence and harassment on its platform. Despite having access to extensive data and developing potential solutions, the company's measures have been inadequate, leaving thousands vulnerable to harm. This episode underscores the critical need for greater accountability and transparency in the gig economy to ensure passenger and driver safety.

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Notable Quotes:

• Emily Steele [09:04]: "Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United States almost every eight minutes on average."

• Emily Steele [16:59]: "This model could correctly anticipate 15% of sexual assaults on trips using Uber's basic ride-hailing option."

• Emily Steele [22:23]: "Safety has ranked as one of the top reasons for prospective female drivers to not join Uber."

• Emily Steele [24:37]: "By classification, Uber drives as independent contractors, allowing the company to avoid significant employment costs."

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[^09:04]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^10:48]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^13:14]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^16:59]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^21:14]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^22:23]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^24:37]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^26:16]: Timestamp reference from the transcript
[^28:55]: Timestamp reference from the transcript

Transcript

[Emily Steele]

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[Natalie Kitroweff]

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroweff. This is the Daily. For years, Uber has said it's one of the safest ways to travel. But a Times investigation has found that behind closed doors, the company's been contending with a massive problem. Hundreds of thousands of people reporting that they'd been sexually assaulted or harassed during Uber rides. Today, my colleague Emily Steele on what executives knew about the problem and how they failed to take certain steps that were supposed to make riders SAFER. It's Friday, August 8th. So, Emily, you've covered sexual assault for the New York Times for years. You've won a Pulitzer for your Me Too coverage. And you've also covered safety issues in a number of industries. Tell me how you arrived at looking at Uber, because I think this investigation kind of combines your two areas of expertise.

[Emily Steele]

Yeah. So it was back in March, someone had suggested that I look into Uber and to look at into the company's issues with sexual assault. And at first I was skeptical. I thought, you know, everybody knows about Uber's raucous tech bro, period. Everybody knew about the CEO Travis Kalanick, who reigned over Uber during this wild time when there was scandal after scandal. There was a 2014 rape in India that made headlines, and the company came under scrutiny for how it handled that incident.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Emily Steele]

There were also a lot of issues inside the company where there was sexual harassment, harassment within the workplace. Allegations were very prominent at the company during that time. And then what happened was the company cleaned up. Travis Kalanick was pushed out of the company. Uber hired this new CEO. His name was Dara Khasrashahi. He was the head of Expedia previously. And he was really seen as the grown up who had come in to clean up this company's tech bro culture to get this company ready for its initial public offering. He introduced a new era, he said, of transparency and integrity and accountability. And the company promises that they will put safety first. The motto for the company has switched from super pumped to do the right thing, period. And publicly, it really seemed like the company had cleaned things up. And so it made me wonder, is there A story here.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

And what'd you find?

[Emily Steele]

So then I started to look and I started to dig a little bit, and I saw that there were lawsuits against Uber all across the country. And I saw that there were these two proceedings that were consolidated in California, one in state court and one in federal court, where there were literally hundreds of lawsuits from people who had claimed that they had been assaulted or harassed by their Uber drivers. There was a person who said that they were sexually assaulted, battered, raped, harassed and attacked by their driver. There was another complaint where somebody said that their Uber driver had thrown this woman's phone and purse out of the vehicle, pulled over and started to do all this terrible stuff to her.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yikes.

[Emily Steele]

And then I came across a story that was just horrifying. It happened on a Thursday night in December, in 2023. There was a woman in Houston who called an Uber to come pick her up from an apartment complex. So she was picked up at 8:53pm she wanted to be dropped off at this house about 22 minutes away. But the trip diverged with an eight minute stop near a gas station. At that point, Uber sent a notification to this woman. It's an automatic notification to check on her, to say, are you okay? She didn't respond. And then the ride continued to deviate from its route, and at 9:29pm it stopped near a Motel 6. Uber sent another notification to check on this woman. She didn't respond. And then four minutes later, Uber tries to contact her with a robocall. She doesn't pick up. And this trip remains active on Uber with no recorded movement until the driver marks it complete at 2:01am about four hours later, this woman calls Uber and she's frantic. She said that she had been intoxicated. She said that she had been taken to a hotel and raped by her Uber driver. She said that she woke up in a hotel room with that driver, who then fled after she became frantic.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

That is just a horrific story.

[Emily Steele]

Yeah. So Uber banned the driver immediately after the incident, and I was able to get my hands on an internal investigation into what happened. The driver had received two previous accusations of sexual misconduct against him for making inappropriate comments, and three automated attempts to try to get in touch with this rider had gone unanswered. And it says in this report, it says, quote, are our actions, or lack of actions defensible? And what was really scary is that she wasn't alone. As I started to look more and more into this, I saw case after case after case after case. And so I thought, gosh I don't think people know about this. This is happening in Illinois, in Maryland, in North Carolina, in Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, California, Florida, just like all across the country. And the claims were recent. These weren't claims from 2014. They weren't claims from 2018. They were claims from 2023-2024-2021-2022. It was recent stuff. And so it made me wonder, how big is this problem? What is the scope of this problem? What does the company know? What have they done about it, and what have they not done about it?

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How do you go about getting to the bottom of those questions?

[Emily Steele]

That was a really big challenge. I learned initially that there was no central database that collects all of these reports of sexual assault in the rideshare industry. So I thought, okay, maybe I can build my own. And I submitted Freedom of Information requests to cities all across the country to say, how many police reports, how many complaints of sexual assault do these different municipalities receive? And that is a long process. And so I submitted those requests and then kind of kept digging. And then I talked to a lot of sources, and what people said was that the place where I could get all of this information would be Uber, that Uber would know how many reports of assault were happening on its platform.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right.

[Emily Steele]

Uber collects all of that information. And so I was determined to figure out how I could get my hands on that information.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

You gotta go to the source.

[Emily Steele]

I had to get the data.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Yeah, and it sounds like you did. Somehow.

[Emily Steele]

I did somehow. Obviously, I can't say how I got this information, but over the course of this reporting, I was able to get my hands on literally thousands of pages of internal company documents. These are emails, they are slack Messages, they are PowerPoint presentations, they are reports and other documents. Hundreds of these documents have been filed in court under seal.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, and what do you see when you're looking at these documents?

[Emily Steele]

So one of the first things that catches my eye when I'm looking at these documents is a spreadsheet, and it says, Uber trips with reports of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the US and what it says is that Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the United states almost every eight minutes on average. Between 2017 and 2022, one report to.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Uber of sexual misconduct or assault every eight minutes. What does that amount to?

[Emily Steele]

So the total number for that period is 400,181. Wow. That is much more than what the company has publicly disclosed. Publicly, the company has said that they had 12,522 accounts of serious sexual assault on the platform during the same time period. But Uber had not revealed the total number of sexual assault and sexual misconduct reports that it had received.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, so this is a difference basically between what Uber is saying is serious sexual assault and this bigger, far bigger number that includes all sexual assaults and claims of harassment.

[Emily Steele]

Exactly. Uber tracks 21 different categories of sexual assault and sexual misconduct. What it reveals publicly is 5 of what it considers the most serious categories of sexual assault. And this number, this 400,000 figure, represents all of the cases of sexual assault and sexual misconduct on the platform.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Did you ask Uber about this? What did. What did they say?

[Emily Steele]

I did ask Uber about this, and what Uber has said is that there is no tolerable level of sexual assault. And they did point out that about 75% of those 400,000 reports were, quote, unquote, less serious in nature. They were things like making comments about somebody's appearance, flirting, or using explicit language. The company also said that those 400,000 reports had not been audited by the company. So they could include incorrect reports or also fraudulent reports that were submitted by people who wanted a refund.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Okay, so they're saying 75% of that 400,000 is less serious. But I guess, I mean, to me, you know, 25% of that amount is still like 100,000 claims. That's a big number.

[Emily Steele]

What Uber says is millions of people hail a car in the US Every single day, and that the vast majority of those trips go without incident. They say 99.9% of rides occur without any report, any safety report of any kind. And they say that because Uber operates on such a large scale, that you're going to see the best and worst of society show up on those rides. But the thing is that even a fraction of a percent can translate into many, many attacks.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So it sounds like you're seeing the answer to your first question that you came to these documents with, which is, what's the scope of this problem? And that answer is, it is big. It's a big problem. What did you learn about your second question, which is, what did Uber know and when did they know it? What did they do?

[Emily Steele]

So as I'm paging through these documents, it's literally thousands and thousands and thousands of pages. And what I found was that Uber not only was aware of this problem, but they actually were studying incidents of sexual violence. By 2016 and that year, there were data scientists in the company, and they saw that sexual assault followed distinct patterns on the platform.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

What do you mean by that? What are the Patterns.

[Emily Steele]

So women most often are the victims, whether they are passengers or drivers. The attacks typically occur late at night and on the weekend, with pickups originating near a bar. In the vast majority of these cases, the offenders are men, either drivers or passengers. And those men, both the drivers and passengers have records of sexual misconduct complaints on Uber and low ratings. And then intoxicated passengers are especially vulnerable.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

It's interesting. We're not just talking about female passengers. Right. It's also female drivers who are experiencing harassment and assault at the hands of passengers.

[Emily Steele]

Right. And that was something that wasn't an issue that I immediately knew about, but it was something that I learned about in this reporting that drivers are victims too. It's not just passengers. And one of the other really interesting things that I found is that for years, teams inside of Uber have tested tools that they found were effective at making trips safer. But the company delayed or did not require its drivers to adopt some of those most promising programs. And they also didn't warn passengers about the factors that it linked to attacks.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We'll be right back.

[Emily Steele]

Hi, I'm Juliette.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

I'm Joelle. We're from the New York Times Games.

[Emily Steele]

Team, and we're here talking to fans about our games.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

What's your vibe when you're playing one of our games?

[Emily Steele]

It makes me feel like I'm procrastinating in a really productive way. It just scratches an itch in my brain. We have a routine.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

I'm doing long distance with my boyfriend. We'll call every night and share our screen. We do connections, the Mini, and then.

[Emily Steele]

Strands, always in that order. Aw. Do you have a favorite?

[Natalie Kitroweff]

The Mini. We try and get it under 30 seconds.

[Emily Steele]

We rarely get it under 30, but.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

That'S always the goal. Folks will really time themselves. But with Spelling Bee, I give myself all day.

[Emily Steele]

I play it when my kids are going to bed.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Do you guys play together? My daughter plays.

[Emily Steele]

She likes playing wordle. If you ever miss a day, there's also archives.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

That's so great to know.

[Emily Steele]

And you have it for connections as well.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Lord help me, I'm just gonna be.

[Emily Steele]

Doing that all day, every day. New York Times games subscribers get full access to all our games and features. Subscribe [e-mail] games for a special offer.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Emily, let's talk about these tools that you said Uber developed that the company itself thought could kind of help prevent sexual assault during rides. Tell me about those solutions.

[Emily Steele]

Yeah, so I think there are three worth talking about. One was designed to be part of the sophisticated algorithm that happens behind the scenes, when you open up the Uber app and tap to request a ride. There were teams of data scientists inside of Uber who for years worked to develop this special model to forecast which matches between a driver and a passenger might lead to a sexual assault.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How do they do that?

[Emily Steele]

So there was this one presentation that I looked at. It was a 2017 presentation. It was called Preventing Sexual Assault. And this document detailed how the company could use 43 different predictors. Things like reporting a creepy driver safety incident, reports geographic information like the number of bars near a pickup. And this data driven machine learning model does some sort of sophisticated calculation to score the risks of pairings between drivers and passengers. And the company actually quietly tested this program in Los Angeles in 2018. And what Uber found is that this program could correctly anticipate 15% of sexual assaults on trips that were using Uber's basic ride hailing option.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Sorry, so are you saying that Uber was running a safety test on, like, live customers where the company is accurately predicting ahead of time that someone is likely to be assaulted or harassed?

[Emily Steele]

That's what these documents show. They show that the company was testing this model in shadow mode and not acting on it. An internal presentation a few months later on this tool called it potentially the most effective intervention for preventing sexual assaults.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So what do they do with it?

[Emily Steele]

So what I learned is that this tool has been up and running in the United States since 2022. So it's part of that system that Uber now uses to respond when you request a trip. And it has long been considered a trade secret at the company. And the company hasn't spoken publicly about this technology until now. The way that this tool works, it first determines the risk of potential pairings between drivers and passengers, and then it uses those scores to try to select the best match. And so it will prioritize rides that are safer and downrank pairings between drivers and passengers that are less safe.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So the rides that are determined as risky are deprioritized. They're put at the end of the line of all the options that you might get when you call an Uber.

[Emily Steele]

Right, exactly. But what I found in all of these records was a document from 2024, and it identified a problem with this system. It said that Uber was still dispatching trips that it had identified as high risk.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So why not just eliminate those pairings? Why not, for example, kick off those drivers or riders that are seen as potentially, you know, aggressive?

[Emily Steele]

So Uber does say that it bans drivers and passengers that are accused of serious sexual assault or a number of lower level complaints. And what it also says is that this technology cannot reliably predict whether an individual pairing or trip will result in an incident or not. And Uber also said that if they were to unilaterally block all sorts of trips, like requests from bars late at night, that that could leave many people stranded on the street and it could encourage them to drive drunk or walk home unsafely.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So they're making the argument that, look, this tool might be useful, but it isn't completely predictive, and trying to mitigate the risk on any one pairing could actually lead to more dangerous scenarios.

[Emily Steele]

Right.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So what's the second solution that the company looked at?

[Emily Steele]

So another solution that the company has been exploring for years is the idea that you could pair women drivers with women passengers.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Theoretically, the people least likely to assault each other.

[Emily Steele]

Right. The company first introduced this option in Saudi Arabia in 2019 with the choice for women drivers to select women passengers. But Uber held off introducing this as an option in the United States.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How come?

[Emily Steele]

Well, so what's really interesting, though, is as recently as last fall, executives greenlit a pilot for a women matching option in the United States, and it was supposed to start in November. And then days after Donald Trump is elected president, executives decided to hold off. And there was an internal document that said this is not the right environment to launch and we want to take a beat to reassess our timing.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Hmm. I'm just wondering, overall, is this really a long term solution to the problem? Because there aren't that many women Uber drivers, at least in my experience, there's way more men driving for the platform.

[Emily Steele]

So one of the big issues or one of the big hurdles to introducing this option is Uber had to have an of women drivers.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Sure.

[Emily Steele]

And there was an internal document that I found that said that several high profile assaults had made it difficult to attract those women to drive for Uber. It said safety has ranked as one of the top reasons for prospective female drivers to not join Uber and for current female drivers to not drive during certain hours of the day when there also are other things to think about. People inside the company worried, if we introduce this, are we telegraphing that other Uber rides are not safe? There were worries that if this option were to cost more, would that be considered a pink tax? And most importantly, there was the fear of gender discrimination and other lawsuits that the company calculated could cost more than $100 million. But despite all of that, the company did announce at the end of July that it was going to start testing women matching options in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

It sounds like in the case of both of these first two options, you have them rolled out in one case without us knowing. In the other case, there was a long delay before it happened. What about the third solution?

[Emily Steele]

So the third solution is dashcams. As early as 2014, the company had been exploring the idea of using cameras in cars. And then the new CEO comes in, Dara Kajwashahi, and he outlines this vision of installing inexpensive cameras and Uber cars that would record trips by default. Employees studied this plan, and they found not only would it be feasible and cost effective, but it also was likely to reduce sexual misconduct and help drivers. But the company didn't do it.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Why not?

[Emily Steele]

Largely because installing cameras in Uber cars would conflict with the company's business model.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

How so? What do you mean by that?

[Emily Steele]

So, by design, Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors, not employees. That means that Uber and other gig economy companies can avoid paying significant costs that are associated with traditional employment. So that's things like minimum wage, it's overtime, it's employee benefits, it's time for rest breaks. This is the key to Uber's business model. And Uber goes to great lengths not to treat drivers like employees. And so they do things like limit trainings and not require certain equipment like cameras to be installed in cars.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

This seems pretty critical to the whole story. I mean, preserving that contracting model is obviously so important to Uber. You can imagine how much their costs would go up if suddenly they had all of these drivers as employees.

[Emily Steele]

Right? It's crucial to the company's business. And what Uber says is that it offers the option through its apps for drivers and passengers to record audio and for drivers to use their phones and the front facing camera on their phone to record video. But that the decision not to require video recording had as much to do with very practical challenges and privacy concerns as it did with driver's employment classification. So Uber has essentially come up with a hybrid solution. And the advantage for Uber is that those options preserve the company's business model.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Just to explore for a second what I imagine that the company's position is. If the drivers are not employees of Uber, is it fair actually to hold the company responsible for what happens in their cars? You know, it's like, I think we all know that when we order an Uber, we're getting into a private car that's being driven by a gig driver. Sure, they've been vetted to some extent by the company, but Uber is just the matchmaker, right? They aren't literally providing the Service.

[Emily Steele]

You are right. That's the company's position, and it is at the core of the litigation that Uber is now facing in these 3,000 lawsuits in federal and state courts from passengers who said that they were sexually assaulted or harassed by their Uber drivers. The company has called those lawsuits a legally baseless attempt to hold it liable for the extremely rare and unforeseeable criminal acts of independent drivers. In some cases, the company has even turned around and sued those drivers that were accused of assault, essentially saying that if those allegations were true, that the drivers had violated their agreements with the company. But the people suing Uber claim that the company is responsible for the misconduct of their drivers. They say that the company is more interested in growth than protecting its passengers. And then they say that the company has gone to great lengths to cover up what they've described as a sexual assault epidemic.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

In just thinking about the three solutions that we've talked about, it does seem as though in each case, there was an aspect of this that the company wasn't really publicizing either the problem itself or the solution in some cases. And I guess I'm wondering why you think that is, because it does seem like something that, you know, writers would have wanted to know about.

[Emily Steele]

Right. So in my reporting, that was something that was really striking to me, because at the same time that Uber was studying this problem, developing tools for this problem, they also were deploying some pretty aggressive media campaigns to publicize that Uber is one of the safest options for travel. And to highlight these risks could present a problem. It could say, hey, we might not be as safe as what we said we were.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

So you're saying basically, one of the reasons the company might not be telling people about this is that it could freak people out, it could scare them away. It could contradict that message of safety.

[Emily Steele]

And the idea of warning customers about the patterns linked to attacks has actually caused some rifts inside of the company. There have been people who have said internally, look, we need to tell people. We need to tell them. The rides that are the most risky are the ones when people are getting picked up by a bar. If it's a single woman in the backseat alone, if she's intoxicated, and the company ultimately decided not to. I found a presentation discussing whether or not the company should include day or time patterns about when these incidents occur. And there's a slide in this presentation that basically says if we include this information, it will lead to fewer people riding in Ubers.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Huh. So directly saying the quiet part out loud, this could Hurt our business.

[Emily Steele]

Right.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

It does seem as though a lot of this comes down to transparency. I mean, whether Uber is liable is sort of for the courts to decide. But the fact that the company is really not making this public isn't being honest with us about what the risks are and then letting us decide if we want to get in the car. I mean, that feels like a really important question in all of this, and.

[Emily Steele]

That'S something that came up over and over again in my reporting, is how much does the company know? How much has it told us about what it knows? And what should Uber tell us about what it knows? And if people know about the harm and they know about the risks, they can take steps to protect themselves and to protect others.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Right?

[Emily Steele]

So maybe they won't take an Uber by themselves when they're drunk coming home from a bar. Maybe they won't put their drunk friend in the backseat of a car. Maybe they will turn on the options to record the audio of those rides. You see the stats and you see the data, and you see how there were 6.3 billion rides that occurred during this time period when all of these assault occurred. That's just a fraction of a percent of rides that end in serious incidents. But when you look at those individual incidents, it's stories of people whose lives have been upended by one ride and they're facing a lot of trauma and a lot of pain. And the question is, if they had had more information, would they have been better able to protect themselves? And did the company do enough to protect its customers?

[Natalie Kitroweff]

Emily, thanks so much for your time.

[Emily Steele]

Thank you.

[Natalie Kitroweff]

We'll be right back. I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a critic for the New York Times, and I'm the host of a brand new podcast called Cannonball. We're gonna talk about that song you can you can't get out of your head. That TV show you watched and can't stop thinking about and the movie that you saw when you were a kid that made you who you are, whether you like it or not. I was so embarrassed the whole time because it's a bad film and I still love it. You can find Cannonball on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Here's what else you need to know. Today, after 10 hours of deliberations, Israel's leaders approved the military takeover of of all of Gaza, a plan that had been proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The move goes against the advice of the Israeli military and warnings that expanded operations could endanger the hostages still held in Gaza. And kill more Palestinian civilians. The security cabinet also approved several principles for ending the war, including the return of all remaining hostages, the disarming of Hamas, and the establishment of an alternative governing body in Gaza that doesn't include Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. The plan would allow for humanitarian aid to be delivered to civilians outside of combat zones, according to a statement from the prime minister's office. It'll likely take the military days at least to call up reserve forces and allow time for the forced evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the new areas of combat. In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, before the cabinet met, Netanyahu said Israel did not want to maintain permanent control of Gaza or govern it, and President Trump has announced he's nominating Stephen Miron, his top economic advisor, to serve as a governor at the Federal Reserve. Myron has been a staunch defender of Trump's economic policies and has echoed the president's criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates. Trump made it clear that Myron would serve in the position temporarily if confirmed by the Senate, though it's possible that he could stay on. The White House is planning to run a separate process to nominate someone to fill the seat starting in February, and that person could potentially be elevated to become the chair of the Central bank next year when Powell's term expires. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Jessica Chung and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Maria Byrne and Michael Benoit. Condition contains original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Powell and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Natalie Kitrowek. See you on Monday.

[Emily Steele]

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