Facing intense legal pressure over passenger safety, Uber is permanently banning US drivers with a history of violent felonies, child abuse, or stalking. The move is part of a sweeping overhaul of its background checks, which the company claims is now the strongest in the rideshare industry.
The changes follow a shareholder lawsuit filed against Uber's board and executives, citing a "long history of devoting insufficient resources to customer safety and protection." This legal action adds to ongoing concerns about the platform's safety record, which has been marred by sexual assault lawsuits for years.
In one recent high-profile case, Uber paid $8.5 million to settle a lawsuit from a 19-year-old plaintiff who was raped by a driver.
What's Changing in Uber's Vetting Process
Effective this past Monday, Uber’s updated policy scraps the previous seven-year lookback period for several serious crimes. The company will now disqualify applicants for life if they have convictions for:
- Violent felonies such as armed robbery, aggravated assault, and arson
- Child abuse and endangerment
- Strangulation and stalking
These lifetime bans are in addition to existing ones for convictions related to sexual assault, sex crimes involving minors, murder, kidnapping, and terrorism.
The seven-year disqualification window remains for other offenses, including DUI, reckless driving, theft, fraud, and harassment. Drivers must also have a clean three-year record for driving without a license or insurance.
To enforce these deeper checks, Uber will now use a 99-year (lifetime) Social Security Number trace for both new applicants and the annual re-screening of current drivers, a major shift from the previous seven-year trace.
According to a Bloomberg report, these new standards are expected to remove tens of thousands of drivers from the platform, accounting for about 0.5 percent of its US workforce.
The Impact on Drivers and Company Operations
Uber is making a narrow exception for a small group of existing drivers. Roughly 2,000 drivers with felony convictions older than 15 years—and not sexual in nature—can remain on the platform if they have no serious interpersonal safety complaints.
"We believe this is the right thing to do for drivers who have rebuilt their lives and demonstrated good behavior on and off the Uber platform," the company said in its announcement.
To conduct these enhanced checks, Uber uses third-party providers that search a wide array of federal, national, and local databases, including the National Sex Offender Public Website.