Think about the last time you requested a rideshare. You opened an app, a stranger’s car pulled up, and you got in without a second thought.

For most passengers, that moment feels entirely routine. That comfort is precisely what rideshare companies have spent billions of dollars selling.

What they have not told you is what it feels like to be on the other side of that transaction.

I drove rideshare platforms for years. Every shift began the same way: I unlock my doors for a stranger whose identity I cannot verify, whose background has never been checked, and whose intentions I have no way of knowing. The platform that dispatches me to that pickup location knows more about the risk of that ride than I do, and yet it chooses not to share that information with me.

We are told the work is flexible and the platform is safe. What we are not told is the extent to which the company has documented the dangers drivers face, and how it has elected, year after year, to absorb that knowledge without acting on it.

Emmanuel Kwame Gbedee Sr. was a 57-year-old father of four from Durham, N.C., a devoted husband who drove for Uber to provide for his family. On an otherwise ordinary evening, he accepted a ride request. The passenger who entered his vehicle produced a gun, demanded his belongings, and shot and killed him. He never came home; his family learned of his death the following morning when law enforcement arrived at their door.

In April 2026, attorneys for his estate filed a civil lawsuit against Uber Technologies and Rasier LLC, Uber’s driver-facing subsidiary, asserting wrongful death, negligence and failure to warn, alleging the company was aware of ongoing and escalating harm to drivers and declined to implement the protections it had the capacity and the duty to provide.

Gbedee’s death is devastating in its particulars, but familiar in its pattern. In Monroeville, Pa., Christina Spicuzza was a 38-year-old mother of four driving Uber for supplemental income when a passenger placed a gun to the back of her head and ordered her to keep driving. Dashcam footage captured her pleading with him: “I’m begging you, I have four kids.” Her body was found days later in a wooded area outside Pittsburgh.

In Albuquerque, N.M., an 18-year-old used his girlfriend’s account to order an Uber with the explicit intention of shooting the driver, telling police afterward he did it to “let off some steam.” He scrolled through available drivers and selected his target. Joseph Andrus was chosen deliberately. Any driver logged in that night could have been killed.

These cases share more than their violence. Rideshare platforms grant riders anonymous, unscreened access to drivers who have no meaningful recourse when something goes wrong. Uber has developed algorithmic tools capable of identifying high-risk rides before they are dispatched, and has chosen to withhold that information from the drivers taking those rides.

From 2014 to 2016, Uber collected a designated “Safe Rides Fee” from passengers, with no regulatory obligation to account for how those funds were actually used. A $28.5 million class action settlement forced a name change but not a policy change; the fee persists today as under the name “Booking Fee.” And despite the degree of control these companies exercise over every aspect of a driver’s work, from setting fares to assigning riders — and disciplining drivers who decline rides — they disclaim responsibility for the safety of the very people they direct.

States are beginning to take notice. But patchwork legislation will not be enough. Congress must act.

Enforceable federal safety standards for rideshare companies, including rider identity verification, passenger background screening, and mandatory disclosure of algorithmically flagged high-risk rides, would protect the millions of drivers who keep these platforms running every single day across every state in this country.

Gbedee’s family is asking that his death produce something beyond their grief. Every night, drivers across this country unlock their doors for strangers and accept the vulnerability that comes with that act as the cost of doing the work. We are owed more than a platform’s assurance that safety is a priority. We are owed accountability when that assurance is hollow, and we are owed a Congress willing to demand it.

Nicole Moore is a rideshare driver and president of Rideshare Drivers United, an organization representing gig economy workers across the nation.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.