Women-Only Ubers Won’t Improve Ride Sharing Safety

Here’s what might work better

Photo by Leiada Krözjhen on Unsplash

The car pulls up. It’s late, the street is empty, and my heart ticks faster than the surge pricing.

I check the plates twice. I glance at the driver. Male. My stomach knots. I slide into the backseat anyway, thumb hovering over the share trip button.

His jaw is clenched, and for a moment it makes me tense. But the feeling that follows isn’t danger so much as sadness. Maybe his tightness is just the weary ache of a man who knows he’s been cast as the villain before he’s spoken a word. He’s a husband and a father of daughters, working another late shift, carrying the invisible price of other men’s violence.

This is the quiet math of modern ride-sharing.

The problem with women-only ride-shares

In the U.S. alone, Uber logged nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault or violence in just two years, with women overwhelmingly the victims. No wonder many of us crave a women-only option.

Yet most rides, by every public measure, end without incident. Millions of men drive safely every day, screened through criminal background checks and ongoing monitoring, and still find themselves treated as potential threats simply because a few men have caused…