New Lawsuit Accuses Uber of Deliberately Downplaying Its Sexual Assault Problem

A few months after Uber reluctantly added a “women’s driver” option to its list of ride-share services—the literal barest of minimums for a company with a documented history of sexual assault issues—a new lawsuit is resurfacing just how deep the problem runs. 

According to a new stockholder complaint filed Wednesday by three pension funds from Louisiana, Florida, and Pennsylvania, Uber executives deliberately minimized the number of sexual misconduct allegations reported against their drivers from 2017 to 2022. The lawsuit, called Louisiana Sheriffs Pension & Relief Fund v. Khosrowshahi and initially reported by Forbes, accuses Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and other higher-ups of doing this so that they could cash millions for bonuses and financial incentives around a higher safety record. 

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because in 2025, Uber disclosed 12,522 instances of “serious sexual assaults” during that six-year period when the New York Times reported that, per court records, the number of sexual assault and misconduct reports was actually more than 400,000. The reason for this discrepancy was explained away by Uber’s Head of Safety for the Americas Hannah Nilles at the time, who told the NYT that about 75% of the 400,181 reports were “less serious”—citing examples of drivers commenting on people’s appearance, flirting, or using inappropriate language. She also mentioned reports could include instances of people trying to get a refund. 

The complaint by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension & Relief Fund, Boynton Beach General Employees’ Pension Plan and Steamfitters Local 449 Pension Fund resurfaces this discrepancy, saying also that Uber “ignored red flags” around its safety. It cites an instance where a “head of safety” at Uber (it is unclear if this was Nilles) also told company employees that passengers “ride Uber at their own risk.” Which, aside from being not-at-all reassuring from someone in charge of safety at a ride-share company, could be pretty damning.

Uber coded a software that uses predictors to predict—with 51% certainty—when a sexual assault may occur but didn’t roll out the tool until 2022 and, even after, continued to dispatch trips it had identified as high risk without any warning to the rider.
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— Amy Jean Nobles (@ajnobles.com) July 24, 2026 at 6:31 AM

 

The lawsuit also says that while Uber apparently addressed safety threats with new technologies and policies, many of them were either abandoned or delayed in their executions. One of these included a program that could identify “creepy drivers” to somewhat predict whether they’d pose a danger to their riders—though it never followed up with actually telling said riders when they booked them.

All things considered, though, Uber has been plagued by its issues with sexual assault almost since it was first founded in 2009. With documented reports of abuse beginning in at least 2012, the company’s issue has gone from bad to what the NYT calls “festering,” with hundreds of women having sued the company over sexual assault, rape, and kidnapping claims. As someone on BSky wisely wrote: Maybe it’s time for Uber to go Unter.