Ride-hailing company Uber denies that its drivers are involved in attacks on customers in Pretoria East who claimed to have been passengers on the app when the late-night incidents occurred.
The Sunday Times reported last weekend that four people had opened cases of robbery and assault with the police after they were allegedly attacked during or after rides they requested on the Uber platform. On Thursday, the police confirmed three more cases, bringing the total to seven over the past five weeks.
On Friday, Uber’s GM for Sub-Saharan Africa, Kagiso Khaole, blamed “third party” criminals for the attacks.
He said Uber conducts thorough investigations, including obtaining statements from their drivers and analysing allegations and counter-allegations by scrutinising their technology.
“We know, for example, if you met up with the driver. When you tell your story, does it corroborate the information we have? Secondly, did this driver drive with you to where you said the incident happened?”
But is Uber’s technology infallible?
“Our information is not perfect; I mean, we are not in the vehicle, we don’t see what is happening. This is why we started launching all these other safety features.”
One of the passengers who spoke to the Sunday Times last week is Johannesburg resident Kayleigh Marx, who alleged that a male friend and fellow passenger was pepper-sprayed and assaulted before they were both robbed of their iPhones after requesting a ride from a well-known Pretoria night spot in Menlo Park to their guesthouse in the same neighbourhood.
Khaole rejected Marx’s claims.
“In the Kayleigh Marx incident, the driver’s version is totally different from hers. The driver says nothing unusual happened on the day and it was actually two ladies who left phones in his vehicle, and he returned those phones. We can see the driver had a pickup, then we see him leaving and coming back,” Khaole said.
“There were two trips. There was one at 1.11am and one at 1.18am and a completed trip at 1.28am. Then he went on working normally, doing trips and getting five-star reviews.”
According to Marx, she called her mother for help at 1.26am. “By that time it had already happened,” Marx said. She sent the Sunday Times a screengrab of the call register which appears to confirm her timing.
Khaole said the car in question has a private dashboard camera.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the footage because it has an automatic 72-hour cleanup. By the time the matter was reported and we made that request, we weren’t able to get that.”
They didn’t find any similar reports against that driver, he said.
“As per our analysis of the trip, there was a conflict between the rider’s story and the driver’s story. The driver’s story matches the GPS points that we see. There are messages between the driver and the rider when the rider changed the drop-off point to Arcadia,” he said.
Khaole showed Sunday Times a GPS map of the pickup point showing the place where the driver stopped to meet Marx before the trip was cancelled.
On another screen the driver’s vehicle can be seen heading off into another direction.
Marx does not agree.
“We booked a ride through Uber and the person pictured on the driver’s profile was the man who picked us up.”
Marx denies having sent any messages or changing her destination.
“We called a ride to go to our guesthouse in Menlo Park, which is in the same area where we were picked up. I’ve never been to Arcadia in my entire life, why would I want to go from Menlo Park to there at the end of the night if our guesthouse was in Menlo Park?” she said.
Khaole believes victims might be ordering Ubers but entering the wrong vehicles.
“In some cases, we can clearly see the driver circling around, looking for the individuals. We can also see the rider going away from the driver. We see the driver continue to work normally until later in the day, about 5am, knocking off.
“In some of these busy areas, it is important that riders pay attention to which vehicle they’re getting into.”
Khaole said this was why Uber launched safety features.
“You can enable a PIN, so the trip can’t start until the driver punches in the PIN.”
However, despite this, third parties are still able to insert themselves into the process.
“How do third parties gain access? At busy places like airports and night spots, you will find people saying ‘Come take an Uber’, but everybody knows that transaction happens on the app.
“Riders must also ensure they climb into the right vehicle. It has happened to me that I climbed in the wrong Uber at the airport, so I empathise with people this happens to,” Khaole said.
The safety measures fail if the trip is done offline.
“As soon as a trip goes offline, a lot of the technology we have at our disposal falls by the wayside — you are not able to start your audio recording, you can’t use PIN verification, the GPS of the trip is not on. So basically the whole tech stack falls.”
Khaole insisted they act immediately against allegedly errant drivers.
However, he believes the attacks are not Uber related.
“With all these cases we’ve already met with Brooklyn SAPS. Because we have to protect the privacy of riders and drivers on the platform, there’s a channel and a team that looks at law enforcement issues. In this way, we are able to provide the police with any necessary information to prosecute these third parties in a legally responsible manner,” he said.
“SAPS told us from their investigations so far, they are not seeing it as something that is particularly happening to Uber.”
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