Taxi Driver Online

Certainly a mismatch here between the woman's version of what the authorities are doing, and the authorities' version

Sound like quite a bizarre incident, though, at least as narrated here...


'Let down, angry and emotional': Woman says she was sexually assaulted by Uber driver

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2025-09 ... ber-driver

A woman who says she was sexually assaulted by her Uber driver has told ITV News London she feels "let down" and "angry" at the response by authorities.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was travelling from London to Sussex on 5 September when her driver claimed he needed to get out for a cigarette and got in the back seat with her.

She said: "He unzipped his trousers. He started to touch my chest and in between my legs.

"I was really scared, like frozen. I didn't know what to do. I was scared that if I fought him off or tried to contact the police or Uber, that it would make him angry and, you know, he'd do more inappropriate things or worse things.

"And then he just casually got out, got back in the driver's side ... and dropped me near where I needed to go."

The woman said she felt "panicked".

"I thought he might rape me or, you know, hit me, assault me in other ways as well. So, you know, he could have killed me, I don't know."

She reported what happened to the police, Uber and Transport for London.

Describing what happened when she contacted Uber, the woman said: "They couldn't reassure me that the driver's licence would be revoked pending investigation. And they told me that they wouldn't tell me what happened.

"I feel really let down, angry, emotional ... it's just appalling."

An Uber spokesperson told ITV News London: “There is no room for sexual harassment on our platform. We immediately investigated this incident, banned the driver a number of weeks ago, and reported this to the police.”

Despite being banned from Uber's platform, the woman said she feared her alleged attacker could have continued driving and picking up passengers for over two weeks after.

According to documents seen be ITV News London, the driver's TfL licence was revoked with immediate effect on 24 September, despite the incident being reported to them on 9 September.

"Nearly three weeks now, he's been driving around, being able to pick up other women and girls and potentially do the same thing to them, and it's absolutely disgusting," she said.

A TfL spokesperson said they are working with police to investigate the incident, adding: “We take a zero tolerance approach to all forms of sexual harassment and assault, and have revoked the drivers licence with immediate effect.”

Meanwhile, Sussex Police said they take reports of sexual offences extremely seriously and the investigation is ongoing. No arrests have been made yet.

Detective Chief Inspector Steve Cobbett said: "On 8 September, we received a third-party report of a woman having been sexually assaulted in a taxi in Crawley. Officers have engaged with the victim, who is being given specialist support, and an investigation is underway.

"We have also engaged with Transport for London to ensure appropriate safeguarding measures are in place while our enquiries continue."

Sexual offences in taxi and private hire vehicles have more than doubled in the latest 10 years, according to the latest recorded crime figures on TfL's website.

There were 101 reported to the Metropolitan Police Service and City of London Police in 2013 compared to 204 in 2023.

In 2023 only two of the reports - just 1% - led to charges.

Rape and sexual abuse support organisation The Survivors Trust has been working with Uber to improve its safety systems.

But the trust says more needs to be done nationally to tackle sexual assault in the sector and is calling for a national licencing scheme and mandatory dashcams.

Policy advisor Lucy Duckworth said: "Every single taxi in this country should have a dashcam and there should be a national taxi licencing protocol where we can see where taxes are being driven.

"While Uber are doing what they can, we're doing what we can with our response, this needs to come from the government and there needs to be a law change immediately."

Funny that she seems quite supportive of Uber, but they could mandate her wish for CCTV cameras (which is I assume what she means by 'dashcam') if they wanted...

But, of course, they won't

And I'd guess her latter remarks about the 'taxes' and the protocol is maybe about the cross-border thing, although she makes it sound like there should be a big brother-style system watching our every move.

Anyway, on a related note, funny the way many of those in mainstream politics and commentary etc who were loudly banging the drum about CCTV in taxis are now jumping up and down about the digital ID thing. MP Rupert Lowe, for example, whose twitter feed is just a barrage of anti-digital ID stuff at the moment

I'm the opposite - I'm a lot more relaxed about ID cards than councillors potentially having a camera lens in my face all working day, or when I'm using the car in my personal life

Stuart why is the title and your commentry in the plural but the main piece is a single woman ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

He says, while ironically misspelling the word commentary

Don't know, Edders - double typo I'd call it, and just didn't notice it. As you'll be aware, I normally do know the difference between 'woman' and 'women'

(I tend to have more misspellings using the old, wee laptop I'm more inclined to use in the car, which doesn't have the same spellcheck facility But it wasn't because of that, because I was using my more usual laptop with the spellchecker, and it wouldn't pick up a typo like that anyway...)

Corrected now anyway

Actually, it was done deliberately to see if you were paying attention, Edders

is the correct answer

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector