Chicago rideshare drivers take safety demands to City Hall

[September 26, 2024]  By Glenn Minnis | The Center Square contributor

(The Center Square) – Chicago Gig Alliance organizer Lori Simmons vows to keep the pressure on city officials as the group pushes for legislation aimed at keeping rideshare drivers across the city safe and protected.

Simmons and others recently marched on City Hall to amplify demands laid out in the group’s Rideshare Living and Safety Ordinance.

“It’s three main parts,” Simmons told The Center Square. “It's pay, it's driver safety and it's worker protections. We need this to come to a vote before the end of the year. Drivers have been waiting for so long for some help on these issues.”

Earlier this month, Chicago Police issued a safety warning to all rideshare drivers about eight South Side robberies targeting those who accepted service calls over the last several weeks within a three block radius in the South Shore neighborhood.

Simmons argues everyone suffers by those in charge not doing everything they can to keep drivers safe and protected.

“Drivers on the whole, many of them will straight up tell you they don't go to certain neighborhoods anymore,” she said. “And that is exactly the problem that people had with cabs, but unless the companies are going to take extra steps to make the drivers feel safe, they're going to end up making the same decisions the cab drivers ended up making, which is just avoid the area entirely.”

While Uber recently moved to institute a safety feature that makes it possible for riders to verify their identity by connecting to an official ID, Simmons laments that riders aren’t required to take any such action.

“Uber and Lyft, they send out a lot of material to drivers about how to keep them safe,” she said. “But what good does it do to verify somebody's identity if Uber is not verifying their identity? So, I can see the name, but that doesn't mean that's who they say they are.”

Data compiled by the city shows that there were 97 crimes reported involving a rideshare driver in 2021, 86 in 2022, 102 in 2023 and 39 over the first four months of this year with some of the most common offenses including assault, battery, robbery, theft and deceptive practices.