Thumb thing's wrong

While I wonder whatever happened to taxicabs, whose drivers are registered and licensed and driving regulated livery vehicles, I am sad to point out that Uber, the ride-sharing outfit, released an 84-page report last week. Among the facts revealed was that the company received 5,981 reports of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018.  464 of those reports were rapes.

And 19 deaths due to physical assault.

Now sure, they were quick to point out that the other way of looking at these numbers is that 99.9% of Uber rides are free of incident.

And then they quoted information about the rising scourge of sexual assaults, rapes, and homicides all across the nation.

The report goes on to say that 45% of the people accused of being the perpetrators of sexual assault, which bends the notion of predatory drivers being all to blame. In fact, the drivers are the assault victims many times.

But in terms of the rapes, 92% of the victims were riders; 7% were drivers.

Uber and Lyft, the two companies at the head of the line for ridesharing, are both dealing with accusations of being unsafe.

This brings me to a point.  Once upon a time, and I know this will sound ancient, but it was within the past 50 years of so, people would hitchhike, standing on the side of the road with their thumb out, looking to hitch a ride.

For very good reason, you can't remember the last time you saw someone trying to thumb a ride.  And if you did see someone doing that, they had probably just escaped from a penal institution within the last five minutes, and wanted to vamoose.

But no. No one would dream of hitchhiking today. It's just too dangerous to get into a car driven by a random stranger, someone who does God knows what during the day, and gets into his Honda Civic after dark to ferry home young people who wisely choose not to drive after a night in the clubs.

So tell me why hitching a ride by using an app is any safer.