In late May, a young woman was the victim of an attempted kidnapping by a Bolt driver, reviving the #UberCestOver movement amid allegations of sexual harassment. How to explain this phenomenon? Could it be a lack of oversight by the platforms that hire these drivers? Investigation.
“I just had the fear of my life.” This message, Chiara, in her thirties, posted it on the evening of May 31 at around 10:30 p.m., her hands still shaking in the lobby of a hotel near the Porte de la Chapelle. First, the young woman had to go to Saint-Ouen, 20 minutes away, to one of her friends. Landing at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport an hour early, the Italy-based man prioritized safety that night by booking a VTC driver on Bolt, a direct competitor to Uber. When the car arrived, he took every precaution. looked at the license plate, sent its location on WhatsApp to his group of friends. “As a woman, I’m always careful,” she explains Madame Figaro. Accustomed to the application, the latter was far from suspecting that he would soon become a victim of an attempted kidnapping.
In the video #UberCestOver. when users condemn the actions of their drivers
Blurred location
It’s 10pm when Kiara and her driver head out on the ring road. The man sitting on the steering wheel does not speak, remains untouchable. “The tension was heavy,” he recalls. Then I see him take a strange path. I started getting angry when I realized I couldn’t follow myself anymore. Indeed, VTC driver apps now allow you to locate yourself in real time and thus visualize your journey. But when Kiara joins, her location in Paris is not shown. “I don’t know where I am anymore… I started to panic. I called my friend saying very loudly. “Wait, I’m sending you my logo,” I tried to scare the guy, but he didn’t respond. Until this sentence, which still rings in his head and which he still does not understand. This man’s “very low and aggressive” voice freezes his blood. “Where are we going? Where are you taking me?” he asks. Answer: “Why are you afraid? We are just going to see friends.
“Why are you afraid? We just go to friends
Kiara calls her host back, the order to pick her up, screams, begs her taxi to release her. One thing he will end up doing near the Porte de la Chapelle. Away from home, despite everything, he grabs his suitcase, gets out of the car and runs to the hotel lobby for shelter. “I just had the fear of my life,” he wrote on Instagram on the evening of May 31. Without hesitation, he displays his assailant’s face, his profile on Bolt, and his license plate. “I was in tears, I was shaking,” she recalls. If I shared my story, it wasn’t to make noise, but to warn other women that this still happens. His message has since been widely circulated on social media, relaying the many victims of the VTC.
While Kiara has since filed a complaint against her driver, she now intends to attack Bolt immediately. Because the young woman in this man’s car reports the race, but gets no response from the application. “The next day I received a call. It’s scandalous! I would manage to get kidnapped 1000 times. We need to find real solutions to keep women safe in these cars, because what has really changed since the #UberCestOver movement? he asks. Contacted Madame Figaro, the Bolt company responded to the incident and assures that the mentioned driver was immediately suspended from the platform and that an official investigation was initiated. “We work with an association that fights for gender equality and the elimination of violence against women, continues the company’s spokesperson. We have decided to organize a series of trainings to raise awareness about gender and sexual violence for our team and our drivers. These trainings will start from next week.
Trafficking in fake profiles
If Bolt ensures that victims have access to many functions, including an SOS button to directly contact the police, Kiara ensures that she receives dozens of stories a day from women who have dealt with hybrid bikes. . For one, her driver had to drive around Paris, extending her journey and her price from €25 to €110, before offering her sexual favors as an arrangement. Another quotes the driver as saying: “Ah, but it’s a very small race I see there; we must be excused.” And one more customer to add. “He asked me how much I was taking. I didn’t answer, then he told me. “If you don’t answer when I talk to you, you will see what I will do to you. You will not go home, but you will take care of me, that will be your punishment.”
Testimony of VTC victim taken from @chiaralabgdu34 account Instagram screenshot
How to explain such attacks in the face of apparent application control? Part of the answer lies in the recent UberCestOver movement led by feminist Anna Tumazoff to traffic fake profiles online. To avoid the paperwork and restrictions associated with obtaining a professional card, some drivers will actually go so far as to use fakes to register on special platforms. “Since the Thevenud law of 2014, the self-employed must have a VTC card. After theoretical and practical examination, their criminal case is checked by the prefecture. As for the taxis, they must be empty (…) In the case of fake cards or fake drivers, this check does not take place,” the newspaper explained. Set free In an article published in December 2019, a phenomenon causing many problems of traceability.
If the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police headquarters have not yet responded to our requests regarding disaster management, the platforms seem to have taken the problem head on. “At the beginning of May, we implemented a solution to verify the identity of drivers in real time thanks to artificial intelligence,” explains Bolt. It’s the same for Uber, which explains through a spokesperson that “once a week, drivers will now have to submit randomly requested selfies and therefore cannot be expected, thus allowing to verify that it is indeed the right professional in the car.”
Driving ban
Amandin* realizes it. when he was assaulted a year and a half ago, Uber was very supportive, encouraging him to go to the police station and offering to pay for his psychological support. In the middle of the winter of 2021, a 33-year-old young woman goes to a friend’s birthday party. Slightly drunk on the roof of a Parisian truck, he prefers to order the driver to return home. It’s 3 o’clock that night. Muddy, dizzy, blurred vision. He gets into the car, tries, despite everything, to have a conversation with the proactive driver. But very quickly the latter caresses his thigh, pulls his hand towards the front of the car. Arriving in front of her building, she asks him for a “hug”. “He wanted to kiss me, I said no, but I agreed to hug him because I wanted to go home as soon as possible. At that moment, he decided to force me, I struggled, then he persistently asked for my phone number.
Amandin is afraid, feels trapped. So he finally gives up. After 45 minutes in the car, he finally gets out and runs home. The man will call her twice, at 5 in the morning, before her entrance is blocked. The young woman goes to the police the next day. “All the girls who live in Paris have already experienced a similar story. We never go to protest because most of the time we have no information about the attackers. “Once I had a name, an address, a license plate,” he explains. A year and a half later, inside the walls of the Paris Palace of Justice, a man in his forties, married and the father of two children, will be sentenced to 4 months of probation and 5 years of driving ban. VTC. “Women should go all the way. It’s long, it’s difficult, but it’s the only way to change,” the prosecutor said before handing down the sentence. After that, the accused appealed.
In the video: #NeRienLaisserPasser, the 2021 campaign for the Day Against Violence Against Women.
Faced with passenger slings, VTC apps now work closely with authorities concerned about the issue, as well as with various associations fighting for equality. Although Uber says it has already deactivated the accounts of 180 drivers (out of a total of 32,000 active drivers) due to inappropriate reports and actions, its spokesperson nevertheless reminds that “cases of sexist and sexual harassment are a minority of millions of people. trips made each year (the platform has 5 million French users, Ed.)”.
Prevention, victim support, new functions. thus platforms are committed to limiting incidents as much as possible. But it is clearly not enough. Maybe due to lack of knowledge related to these apps. “We realized that very few of our users actually know all the tools and devices available to them,” Uber says. Therefore, the final challenge will be to focus on a new awareness campaign.
Source: Le Figaro
