Are taxis safer with no driver? These women think so.

Women say they're choosing driverless taxis because of safety concerns they have about cab drivers.

Autonomous taxis are winning over women in cities like San Francisco by offering an answer to a long-standing concern about ride-hailing apps: misbehavior by human drivers, especially men.

Some women said in interviews that they’ve mostly stopped using Uber and Lyft, the two most popular ride-hailing apps, and have switched instead to a driverless competitor, Waymo, at least in part because they don’t have to share physical space with an unfamiliar man behind the wheel. In autonomous taxis, software drives the car with no other human present.

Veronica Pastore, 40, a nonprofit worker in San Francisco, said she switched to Waymo about six months ago and that it’s now her default choice when she needs a ride. Concern about drivers is one of the reasons, she said.

“I’ve been in one late at night and thought, ‘This is great. I don’t have to worry about a stranger taking me home,’” she said. Pastore said some of her friends have had scary experiences with ride-hail drivers and she feels fortunate not to have. “It’s always in the back of my mind,” she said.

Reported violence by a ride-hail or taxi driver is rare. Lyft and Uber say that reports of safety violations — which they define as a fatal crash, fatal physical assault or sexual assault ranging from nonconsensual kissing to rape — occur in about one ride out of every 500,000. The most serious violations are especially rare, and in some instances drivers are the victims of violence, not the perpetrators.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/are-taxis-safer-no-driver-women-think-rcna173936

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