End game for Uber? Delhi rape poses serious perils for the cab service

The alleged rape of a 27-year old financial executive by her Uber driver has not only tarnished the company’s brand image as a safe and reliable mode of transportation but also raised the fear that lax security measures have rendered all cab services unsafe in India.

The Delhi police has arrested the Uber driver who was accused of raping the female passenger, identified as Shiv Kumar Yadav, and also plan on pursuing legal action against Uber for not running a background check as well as the absence of a GPS locator in the driver’s vehicle. The police claim that the accused did not even have a driving licence by the Delhi Transport Authority. Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner with the Delhi police, told Reuters, “Every violation by Uber will be evaluated and we will go for legal recourse.”

Uber, on its part, has suspended the driver involved in the incident, and is providing all necessary information to police to assist with the case. In a statement issued in response to the incident, Uber declared, “Safety is Uber’s highest priority and we take situations like this very seriously but the website has no country-specific details on how it runs a background check of drivers in India. Media reports this morning even stated that a previous case of rape had been registered against the Uber driver, afterwhich he spent seven months in jail and was later acquitted. Now, Uber’s ‘global safety practices’ clearly state thatall drivers are screened against multi-state criminal database as well as national sex offender screens, which goes back seven years. But as this case proves, no such background check has been done in India.

Socan we really trust Uber or any other cab service for that matter given that the verification process is so shoddy in India?

Where is the GPS?

Uber does have a GPS to track the cab but doesn’t own the cabs in its fleet and doesn’t ensure that all vehicles have GPS installed. In other words, it can only keep a tab on the cabbie’s movement through the GPS on the driver’s phone and the Uber app but not the cab itself, which is why all the Yadav had to do was switch off the phone to go off the radar. And what if the car is passing through an area with poor data connectivity? Uber would be unable to track the car.

In contrast, competitors like Meru and Easycab, which own their cars have GPS systems in their cars, which are used not just for tracking the cars but also to ensure that they are not speeding. In fact Meru has even installed a panic button its its app that customers can use , which will alert two trusted numbers – of which one is Meru’s – and show the user’s location on a map.

Uber’s shoddy background checks

As for the driver himself, the Uber website offers no country-specific details on whether or how it runs a background check in India.

Several Uber drivers that _Firstbiz s_poke to said that the taxi-hailing cab service does not do a thorough verification of its drivers. “Uber is desperate for drivers given that it wants to be the top player in every city. They will hire anyone. The verification process lasts for just 45 minutes, 25 minutes of which goes in filling up a form. More often that not, the car owner maybe registered with Uber but drivers keep changing who are not always subject to police verification,” an Uber driver told Firstbiz.

An Indian Express report quotes an Ube r driver as saying, “All you need is a car to attach yourself with the cab company. And your papers are submitted and you are handed over all the necessary equipment, including the iPhone. But in most cases, the drivers are not the owners. And once a driver is changed, the owner doesn’t inform the company. Even if the company finds out, there is no elaborate verification process. The man is asked to join work immediately. It’s all about the commission.”

Driver unknown

Sources in the Delhi police told IBN Live that there are several lapses on Uber’s part which probably led to this tragedy. Every commercial driver needs to have a commercial badge, and yet Yadav did not have one. The report further stated that Uber had not even conducted a background check and verification of the accused driver before recruiting him. It is the responsibility of the cab service provider to get the identity verified through police. The address given by Yadav was not his actual residence, and even the phone number that he was using was not registered on his name.

Moreover, there were three drivers who drove the Swift Dzire in which the crime took place. At any given point, Uber didn’t know which of the three was driving as there was only one phone with the Uber app. For Uber’s services in India, cars either belong to the drivers themselves or to vendors registered with licensed travel firms and as this Economic Times article points out , the registered driver needn’t be the person operating the car. Drivers often ask their friends or family members to drive the cab when theyre’s unavailable or busy.

Even though Uber claims it is merely a “service provider” – as stated in their terms of service – it may be held liable if evidence proves that their basic safety procedures were compromised.

Given that Uber’s safety bubble has now burst, rivals are not leaving any stone unturned to take down the app-based taxi service. The Association of Radio Taxis is now planning to appeal to the regulatory authorities against Uber’s security model. “We have been debating it for such a long time… This format has its set of flaws,” Kunal Lalani, head of Mega Cabs was quoted as saying by Business Standard .

In fact post the Uber incident, other taxi companies like Mega Cabs, TaxiforSure and Ola are now scrambling to review the process by which they sign up drivers and make quality checks more stringent.

“Siddhartha Pahwa, chief executive of Meru, is quoted by another report in ET as saying that he personally looks into any complaints made by women passengers, and that each driver applicant has to undergo a special course to deal with women passengers before they get on board.

For Uber, which has a $40 billion valuation at stake and has experienced a string of issues regarding women , the Delhi tragedy is a reminder that sometimes talk is not at all cheap. In this case, it may even cost the company one of its most attractive international markets as the Delhi government has already begun its crackdown and may cancelUber’s permission to operate in Delhi.