There is a big reason why people trust renowned brands over others – brands have an image to maintain, and the perception is that they would (and should) deal with grievances faster because of it. But for a mother of two in Toronto, this choice actually became her worst nightmare when the Uber driver, who dropped her off, drove off with her 5-year-old daughter, with the transportation company steering clear by claiming that intervening would be going against policy. 391243

Yep, you read that right – the internationally widespread Uber, which many trust with their safety and well-being, point-blank refused to help a desperate mother.

In an emotional revelation to People, Julia Viscomi, a mother of two kids in Toronto, shared the March 10 nightmare where she left a Toronto Raptors game with her two kids – Amelia, 5, and son 7 – and her boyfriend plus his two two kids but noticed her partner’s car had a flat. So, out of options, they booked an Uber for the 30-minute ride to her boyfriend’s house, during which her daughter fell asleep.

Since her boyfriend has poor hearing, the couple discussed how to exit the vehicle with four children very loudly, loud enough that Viscomi figured that the driver definitely heard it all. Their plan was for everyone to clear the SUV, and she had opened the garage, she would come back for her daughter. But she was “seconds too late” to get to Amelia as the driver drove off with her. Viscomi hoped that the driver would soon realize there was a child in his car and come back. But he didn’t.

Uber also refused to cooperate with the police.

She then ed the driver telling them that he was headed to his home, 20 miles away, after their ride was done, and realized he was not coming back. Her partner called the driver but couldn’t reach the man. This is when they called Uber’s customer , explained what had happened, and asked Uber to call the driver. Their response to a mother who was worried sick about her daughter?

“We don’t call the drivers. It’s against our policy.”

Uber refused to cooperate with the police 3n3n62

The duo then proceeded to call the police, who got a similar refusal from Uber and commented that “Uber’s incredibly difficult to deal with.” But thankfully, the police managed to track down the driver after about 80 minutes of Viscomi living the hellish experience. As per a Toronto Police Service representative, “the driver was unaware that the child was still in the vehicle. When officers arrived, the child was found in good health.”

No arrests have been made in the case, but Viscomi refused to give up. And what did she get for her efforts and surviving 80 long minutes of living every dire outcome, not knowing what happened to her daughter? A $10 credit from Uber via email.

“I was just so incredibly insulted. This wasn’t a purse left behind. It was a child’s life.”

Her attempt to get in with an Uber supervisor was similarly sidelined because, guess what – the company doesn’t have supervisors. When they refused to give her information for the company’s San Francisco headquarters, and her emails to Uber’s executives and customer didn’t work, she posted a priority overnight letter to Uber’s Toronto office. This got her a call from a Uber priority representative who sent her a letter to Uber’s legal department, which led to a call from an Uber insurer eight days later. And even then, the offered compensation remained super low, and more importantly, they were still nowhere near changing their policy. 

It wasn’t until Viscomi took matters into her own hands and posted her story on Facebook did things finally broke her way. Toronto City Council member Mike Colle came to know about the incident and got his motion ed that makes it mandatory for rideshare services to provide emergency information to their customers and the police.

For Viscomi and Amelia, despite the win, the memory is still fresh. The 5-year-old gets scared even in sparsely crowded setups if she can’t find her mother. If she can’t see me in her peripheral vision, she’ll look left and be like, ‘Mom, you scared me. I didn’t know where you were.’ So there is a little bit of anxiety in there for her,” she added. What still terrifies Viscomi is the fact that all of it was “completely preventable” if Uber had stepped up.

“I’ve told the story hundreds of times, and I still cry. Certain things are very vivid. It’s a very surreal thing to think she was right there with me and then gone in a second.”

While Viscomi’s story ends on a positive note, that is not always the case when it comes to cases involving drivers intentionally or unintentionally driving off with children. Back in 2019, a Pennsylvania toddler, allegedly kidnapped by an Uber driver, was found dead in a park. There are more such horrifying incidents happening out there, and it is high time such big brands are held able for the safety of customers, who allow them to maintain their billion-dollar market value.

TikToker Highofffadri recently caught a man behaving reprehensibly while she and her friends waited for their Uber in New York’s Times Square.

When she shared her TikTok post showing a man asking for her number, and reacting like a man-child when she refused, her comments section blew up about the best and worst places to wait for your ride. To be clear, Highofffadri — or any woman, for that matter — should feel free to stand on a public sidewalk for any reason and not have some creep pester her. In the clip, you can hear her tell the guy to “back up” as he seems to touch her. The guy walks away while still yelling.

Sadly, however, based on comments like, “‘Just say no’ they said. Now look why we can’t simply just say no, and “100 men vs ‘No,'” and then “Why do they even ask for girls numbers if they can’t even handle rejection ,” interactions like what we see in the post are pretty common.

“WORST area for an uber” 3x44j

Meanwhile, one comment called Times Square the “worst” area to wait for an Uber, which got us thinking: Are there safer and less safe places for women to wait for their driver? Rideshare safety is a significant concern for women, and experts recommend waiting for your ride in a well-lit, populated area, much like Times Square, so maybe, as scary as that encounter seemed, she and her friends were in the best spot after all.

But what about after she got in the car? There isn’t much data on the safest place to wait for your driver, but sources say don’t give your driver too much personal information, just like Highofffadri did to the guy who asked for her number on the New York sidewalk.

As of May 2025, Uber has not yet released a safety report covering data for 2024. The most recent available report encomes incidents from 2021 and 2022. In that report, Uber documented nearly 4,000 reports of the five most severe categories of sexual assault during U.S. rides, including 141 reports of rape in 2020.

While specific data for 2024 is unavailable, Uber has introduced several safety features aimed at enhancing enger security, particularly for women. These features include encrypted audio recordings, PIN verification, and live location sharing, allowing engers to select up to four safety preferences during a ride.

But again, let’s take a moment to talk about men’s responsibility in situations like Highofffadri’s post. Other comments included, “No man shouldn’t be putting their hands on any woman for rejecting him,” “100 men vs. ability.” Finally, one guy spoke up and said, “As a guy, the way he handles rejection … is a red flag. Now if he acting like this in public imagine how he acts in private. Stay safe ladies.”

There are two kinds of people who are in more of a hurry than anyone else: someone who’s running late for work and needs to get there ASAP, and someone with an irritable bowel who’s in desperate need of a bathroom. Unfortunately, these two kinds of people came together in one incredibly awkward Uber ride that included an unintended prolonged pit stop.

TikTok @yaya_brie decided to illuminate her followers on the wild experience she had on the way to work one morning. Brie explained that she got an Uber to work that day, but the ride went off the rails when, during the journey, the driver suddenly exclaimed — as Brie spells it — “AHH OH NOOO AHHHH!” The dramatic driver then pulled into a Jack in the Box they ed and fled to the bathroom without a word to her.

20 whole minutes later, he returned and Brie says that she and the driver then sat there in the car in silence for a further 25 minutes. “I was late to work and got a write-up,” she concludes. Something tells us Brie wasn’t able to find the words to tell her boss the real reason why she was running late.

As for what precipitated this bout of Uber IBS, Brie revealed that’s not much of a mystery. “I blame the 32oz Big Gulp he was drinking,” she writes in the description.

With over 16 million people owning the Uber app worldwide, everyone’s got an Uber horror story to tell, so the people of TikTok decided Brie’s confession meant this was a safe space to share their own traumatic tales. “I took a super late uber from my exes house home and it’s a 40min drive, fell asleep and woke up an hour later going in the opposite direction, in the countryside (I lived in the city and so did my ex),” one person recalled. Another commented: “Driver once asked me if he could get a coffee and I said no, I wasn’t comfortable with [that] and needed to be on time. He still stopped and got coffee. I called a different Uber and left.”

Someone else one-upped Brie’s experience by seeing her story about a driver with diarrhea and raised her one about a driver with extreme drowsiness: “My uber driver was falling asleep and asked if I could finish the drive while he took a nap.” Irritable bowels and nap breaks? Pfft, that’s nothing compared to actual manslaughter: “I was in an uber pool, full car, the driver straight up hits a person and drives away. we all witnessed a hit and run.”

In comparison to some of these Uber tales of terror, then, Brie’s Big Gulp-chugging chauffeur comes off a lot more sympathetically. She clearly felt the same as, even though he ensured she got a write-up at work, Brie itted still felt bad for him. In the comments, Brie confirmed, “I gave him 5 stars.” Let’s just hope the guy learned his lesson: either ditch the Big Gulps while on the job or else invest in some adult diapers.

Sometimes a taxi ride can go horribly wrong, and an Uber enger has taken to social media to recall a harrowing story of his experience during a recent ride-sharing trip. 

X @blizzb3ar shared a post on Oct. 27 retelling the story, which began when he “got into my Uber and realized there was a drunk and unresponsive girl in the enger seat.” @blizzb3ar promptly questioned the Uber driver about the unresponsive girl, and was told by the driver that “she’s gonna sleep at my place.”

Naturally, this set off alarm bells for the enger, who said “oh hell no” in response to the driver’s troubling plan for the unresponsive girl. In the interest of her safety, @blizzb3ar said he spent the “next 30 mins going through her phone” and calling friends to inform them of her dilemma. Thankfully, he eventually found an address “I could drop her off at,” and ensured “her friends got to her safely.”

Reflecting on the ordeal, @blizzb3ar was dumbfounded in the moments after the ride-share incident, writing “genuinely, wtf.” He said that while it appeared the female enger got home safe, the driver was nonetheless “riding around with an unresponsive girl for idk how long in his car.” According to @blizzb3ar, the girl “seemed okay” and was “really apologetic for ruining my ride home,” but the delayed trip wasn’t his main concern.  

“I’m just glad she’s safe,” @blizzb3ar wrote. In follow-up X posts, he elaborated on his response when first hearing of the driver’s plan to have the girl sleep at his house. “I went ‘ummmm actually, we are gonna find out a comfortable place for her to get dropped off, thank you,’” @blizzb3ar recalled. The X post, which garnered over 15 million views on X, managed to catch the attention of the official Uber , who said the story was “extremely concerning,” adding that it had been “escalated… to a specialized team who is actively investigating.”

@blizzb3ar replied by informing Uber that he had already ed someone from Uber and “reported everything with him.” The X received widespread for his decision-making in the replies, with many women thanking him for ensuring the girl was brought home safely. “glad you were there,” one wrote, with another sharing their gratitude “on behalf of all women who have ever taken Uber.” 

Others described the enger’s decision as a “priceless action,” and said stories like this are why “we need good men to firmly stop doing nothing and act.” Elsewhere, s said @blizzb3ar might have prevented a far more harrowing outcome, saying his actions “might have saved that girl’s life, thank goodness you were there.” 

“The world’s a better place with you in it man,” another wrote. Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of troubling experiences in Ubers and ride-share services, which are unfortunately common sites for sexual assault and harassment for women in the US. In 2022 alone, Uber reported 141 rapes and 998 sexual assault incidents from engers using its services. 

Meanwhile, in August, two female Uber engers reported what they believed was an attempt to have them trafficked, but their case was reportedly dismissed by police. And last month, another woman took to TikTok to recall her experience of being assaulted while delivering an Uber Eats order.

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Warning: This article contains descriptions of violence resulting in death. Please proceed with caution.

No matter how you look at it, this is an all-around tragic situation. That said, there’s only one person who was nothing but an innocent victim: Loletha Hall, the 61-year-old Uber driver who was only doing her job.

On the morning of March 25, 2024, 81-year-old William Brock from South Charleston, Ohio, shot and killed Hall after she arrived at his home to pick up a package she was unknowingly instructed to by a scammer.

But how did we get here? With the elderly man charged with Hall’s murder?

The scam that led to Hall’s death 4b3r4q

The scammer, who has not yet been identified, was pretending to be an officer of the court repeatedly calling Brock to blackmail him into sending ransom money to release his nephew from prison. The money amounted to 12 thousand dollars, and it was all in the envelope Loletha Hall was told to pick up from the pensioner’s home.

Allegedly, the scammer made threats of violence and death to get Brock to pay up. In his call to 911, he explained that he had been threatened all morning. The homeowner was told someone would drop by his house to pick up the package, but he had no idea this person, Loletha, had nothing to do with the scam.

 The tragic incident v3y3j

When Loletha arrived at the designated house, Brock confronted her with a gun. Guessing correctly this was above her paygrade, Loletha backed away with the intention of leaving. At no point did she threaten Brock. Brock demanded to know whom she worked for and wanted to have her phone, assumingly to see who the scammer was for himself.

“Stop. Stop. Or I’ll call 911.” Loletha could be heard saying in the recording as she retreated from Brock and out of the camera’s view. Loletha tried to go on her way, but Brock told her she could not leave, demanding her phone, and when she didn’t comply, he proceeded to shoot her in the leg. This was when the injured woman started desperately yelling for help, walking backward as Brock threatened to shoot her in the other leg.

“Sir! I’m here to pick up a package!” Hall tells him.

Convinced of his truth, Brock told her that he knew what she was after. After threatening to shoot her in the head, the old man asked her who she worked for, to which Loletha replied “Uber!” and indicated the visible proof that was in her car. But Brock was unrelenting and Hall’s pleas fell on deaf ears.

After shooting Hall again, Brock calls 911. He explained that there had been a shooting and that the victim was “some black woman” who was now lying on his driveway. He was quite candid in itting he shot Loletha in the leg and shoulder but lied saying the driver had threatened to kill him – likely still assuming Hall was in on the scam. The bleeding victim still could be heard calling out for aid in the background. It seemed however that, as cold and unsympathetic as Brock was to the suffering he inflicted, he did not intend to kill Loletha.

Brock has been charged with 2 counts of Felony Murder, Felonious Assault, and Felony Kidnapping. Uber has said they are committed to helping with the investigation. Police actually got to speak with the scammer on the phone. He kept up his officer facade but once he realized he was speaking to a real officer, he promptly hung up. Later, he called back still under the false pretense, asking questions to know more, and arranging to meet with detectives. He did not show up. In the end, the scammer got more information out of those two calls than the detectives did.

At the time of this writing, the unnamed criminal is still at large but hopefully, law enforcement will be able to track down this person, who’s the main one to blame for having triggered this unfortunate sequence of events.

Oftentimes, the police are the most trustworthy people to protect you from unsuspecting criminals. However, in instances when the cops don’t have your back, things can get pretty awful. At least, that’s the case for TikTok Taylor Dickey, who allegedly experienced a harrowing moment during an Uber ride gone wrong. 

Taylor posted a video to her page which has quickly begun to make the rounds on the social media app. Visibly shaking and crying alongside her friend, she narrated her experience to her followers. In the video, she claimed that she was almost trafficked while in an Uber ride. Worse yet, she insisted that “the cops said it was our fault and made us get an uber home from where we escaped.” Taylor and her friend were in a convenience store when the video was recorded. 

Naturally, such scary details have left many sympathizing with her in the comment section. However, there are some naysayers doubting the authenticity of the event, and accusing Taylor of clout-chasing. In a follow-up video she posted, she documented the incident with the help of screenshots and photo evidence. 

Taylor ed a shot of her phone call to 911, which was made at 2:28 am. She also ed proof of Uber notifying her that her ride “ended away from your destination,” which gives a lot more credibility to the episode. Finally, she posted photos showing the policemen who came to the scene, as well as a Snapchat photo from 3:28 am, which she presumably sent to a confidant.

What to do if you suspect instances of human trafficking 22145l

In a very important message from the U.S. Department of State, “Human trafficking victims can be of any age, race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, immigration status, cultural background, religion, socio-economic class, and education attainment level.” It’s important to always know that nobody is above being trafficked, so it’s best to believe and act first, before asking questions. Always endeavor to find the best solution out of a scary experience. 

It’s rather bizarre that the police would insist the traumatized ladies order another Uber home. Regardless, Taylor has let the concerned public know that she and her friend are now safe. Importantly enough, several commenters have indicated that they’ve also felt uncomfortable and even scared in ride-hailing or taxi cars. The police should have definitely been more interested in the case, and escorted the ladies home.

If you, or anyone you know, is suspicious of activities relating to human trafficking, it is important to call the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free at 1-888-373-7888. As stated by the department, “Anti-Trafficking Hotline Advocates are available 24/7 to take reports of potential human trafficking. Text the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 233733.”

WGTC has reached out to Taylor Dickey for more details about the incident and will update this information as received.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in the Showtime series Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, in which he plays Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former CEO of Uber, as he attempts to take the company from tech start-up to a Fortune 500 company.

As is only fitting in the world of mega-investors and tech start ups, Mark Cuban had a connection to the early days of Uber; according to Levitt, “[Cuban] invested in Travis’ company before Uber, Red Swoosh — and he ed on Uber.”

Levitt is a self-itted superfan of NBC’s Shark Tank, and when he found out that Super Pumped co-cretor Brian Koppelman was having dinner with Cuba, he decided to record a video asking the entrepreneur to portray himself in the series. Cuban responded with a video telling Levitt that if he wanted him to be on the show, he would need to “kiss up a lot more than that.”

Levitt’s wife urged him to follow up, so he made a second video in which, forgoing his Los Angles Lakers pride, he donned a Dallas Mavericks cap and shouts, “go Mavs.” Levitt goes on to say, “back in 2011, western conference finals, the better team won. Dirk Navistky’s amazing. Go Mavs, go Mavs. And have you seen their owner? So handsome and intelligent.”

Apparently this was all Cuban needed to hear to say yes. The cast also includes Kyle Chandler, Hank Azaria, and Uma Thurman, and Quentin Tarantino will serve as the show’s narrator.

You can read the show’s full synopis here:

Based on the true story behind one of Silicon Valley’s most successful unicorns and the meteoric rise and fall of Uber founder, Travis Kalanick. Driven by a vision of a transportation revolution, Kalanick takes a win-at-all-costs approach to forge the fledgling start-up into a multi-billion-dollar colossus with the help of venture capitalist Bill Gurley and board member Arianna Huffington. But every surge comes with a price – and his appetite for disruption threatens to be the downfall of it all.

Showtime

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber will premiere on Showtime this Sunday, Feb. 27th.

Hollywood’s longstanding case of double vision took another turn over the weekend, when The Hollywood Reporter revealed Zoolander 2 actor Will Ferrell became attached to one of two competing Uber-themed comedies. It appears that both Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox are overseeing early plans for two likeminded projects revolving around the popular and now international taxi service. Both deals were said to be relatively high-profile – in the six-figure ballpark – and closed within a day of each other. As one would expect, each centers on an unassuming Uber driver who picks up a enger that turns their night on its head. Fox’s script, for instance, was penned by Tripper Clancy, and takes place across the duration of one night – and one prolonged taxi fare – as said driver collects a “grizzled cop working the most dangerous case of his career.” On the other hand, it is Universal’s Uber-themed comedy that has attracted Will Ferrell to star and produce, with the funnyman primed to unite with his Anchorman director Adam McKay on the film’s roster of producers. Neighbors scribe Brendan O’Brien is the brains behind this one, and the fact that Universal has already attracted a big-name comedy star in Ferrell leads us to believe that the studio will break past Fox in its race to the starting line. From Independence Day and Deep Impact to The Jungle Book and Andy Serkis’ Jungle Book: Origins, Hollywood’s history of two likeminded movies releasing in and around the same window is almost uncanny. When it comes to this pair of Uber films, neither has an official release date for now, but expect the Will Ferrell-fronted feature to get off the ground before long.