HughPickens.com [hughpickens.com] writes:
Scores of women have reported rapes and assaults by Uber drivers and BuzzFeed obtained internal information from Uber's customer support platform documenting thousands of complaints of sexual assault and rape over a period spanning December 2012 to August 2015. Now Jenni Avins reports at Quartz that
a ride-sharing service that only uses women as drivers [qz.com], Chariot for Women, is set to launch April 19 in Boston which will feature more stringent background checks and additional steps to ensure riders correctly match with their drivers. Like most ride-sharing apps, users can submit a request for a ride and will then be matched with a driver. However, unlike other services, Chariot for Women features a patent-pending technology that will
provide both users and drivers with a code after a request is made that will need to be verified [glamour.com] upon starting the ride. But “whether it’s legal or not is a different question,” says Joseph L. Sulman. According to civil rights lawyers, Chariots for Women’s female-only policies could put it squarely in the crosshairs of gender discrimination lawsuits, which would be difficult to win. Founder Michael Pelletz says he welcomes the legal challenge. "We want to
show there’s inequality in safety in our industry [buzzfeed.com],” says Pelletz. “We hope to go to the US Supreme Court to say that
if there’s safety involved, there’s nothing wrong with providing a service for women [techcrunch.com].”
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