Drug Runs, Drive-Bys, and Carjackings: When Rideshare Drivers Get Attacked, Uber & Lyft Tend to Go Silent

At age 24, Ayub Mohamad was left paralyzed for life by a Lyft passenger. The company has offered no support, financial or otherwise.

By Rhana Natour

In 2021, Minneapolis experienced what federal prosecutors called a campaign of extreme and "utterly gratuitous" violence against Uber and Lyft drivers. In less than two months, a criminal enterprise of four men used the rideshare apps to rob and carjack at least 13 drivers.

These safety concerns and demands for better pay and benefits have spurred a political rebellion by Minnesota rideshare drivers that is roiling the state's political establishment. 

Uber and Lyft announced plans this month to shut down operations in Minneapolis after drivers garnered enough support from the city council to override Mayor Jacob Frey’s veto of an ordinance that would force rideshare corporations to pay drivers a minimum wage to operate in the city. A similar statewide bill passed the Minnesota legislature last year but was blocked when Gov. Tim Walz (D) issued the only veto of his six years as governor.

Eid Ali, president of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association (MULDA), said that of the long list of grievances his drivers have with rideshare corporations, driver safety consistently manages to remain in the top three, and it is the issue they lead with in their advocacy efforts. “Driver safety is one of our strongest points,” he said. “When we testified in front of lawmakers last year, safety is what we emphasized.”

In February 2022, Ayub Mohamud, a rideshare driver in St. Paul, Minnesota, was shot eight times and left for dead by a Lyft passenger he was driving. Ayub, who was 24 years old at the time of the attack, said he never heard from Lyft during his months-long recovery in the hospital. He said he initiated contact with Lyft once he was medically stable and knew his prognosis: that he would be paralyzed for life. 

“I reached out to Lyft then with questions,” Ayub told More Perfect Union. “I knew my life has changed forever now and I wanted to know what I qualified for.” He said the Lyft representative already knew what happened to him, because law enforcement reached out to the company during their investigation, but Lyft did not offer any further information or support, financial or otherwise.

In a written response to detailed questions about Ayub’s case, a Lyft spokesperson said the company was “in touch with Mr. Mohamud and his family to offer our support” and was “in contact with law enforcement to assist with their investigation.” Guthrie said the rider who shot Ayub “was permanently banned from the platform.”

“What support?” Ayub said on a call in response to Lyft’s statement on his case. “They never reached out to me. They never offered support.” He added, “I don't even have a family in the United States for them to have been in touch with. They are all back in Somalia.” 

There is no reliable data on the dangers of rideshare driving because Uber and Lyft, which are the only comprehensive sources for these figures, don’t make them publicly available. But drivers in multiple states believe the job has gotten more dangerous.

Dashboard camera footage above shows a 2020 passenger assault on Uber driver Muhiyain Yusuf. Yusuf says that despite the video evidence and a case number from law enforcement, Uber never followed up on the driver's complaint. He does not know what, if anything, was done to the passenger’s account.

In Minnesota, Ali told More Perfect Union that the 2021 Minneapolis carjackings are part of a series of incidents across the state where criminals used the app to attack or entrap rideshare drivers. “It has been getting worse,” he said. “So many drivers are lured in with these apps by criminals. So many drivers came to me about this.” In addition to physical attacks, criminals are using rideshare services to conduct illegal activities like drug runs or deliveries.

In Seattle, where five rideshare drivers have been killed on the job since 2020, Ahmed Mumin of the Seattle Rideshare Drivers Association told Cascade PBS that “drivers are very terrified” and “feel the issue is getting worse.” After the murders, Mumin said, Uber and Lyft would not even engage with the drivers association over their safety concerns, so these drivers are now looking to local officials for solutions. 

According to Ali, the individual testimony of rideshare drivers who have been attacked is especially powerful because their accounts of Uber and Lyft’s reactions to violent incident reports are such an indictment of these companies. In several instances, rideshare companies have gone silent after a driver reports an attack or safety incident, refusing to disable accounts of dangerous passengers even when the driver submits dashcam video evidence of an attack. 

In 2018, Boston driver Tye Smith picked up two passengers who he believed were using the app to deliver drugs. “It was tense,” recounted Smith, who drives exclusively for Lyft. ”Sometimes when you see something, you are in disbelief and you are like naw, this can’t be happening.”

During the ride, the two men talked about gun purchases and which guns would “put more holes in people,” Smith recounted. At one stop, as the car approached a porch full of men, Smith’s passengers wondered aloud whether they were going to get robbed or shot. There were times on that ride when Smith felt his life was in danger. “These men are going to assume we are together, that I am with them, so we are automatically in this dangerous situation together,” he said.

But when Smith reported this incident to Lyft, the company merely said the passengers would not be paired with him again. This was also the response he said he received to two complaints in 2016 about passengers calling him the n-word. In response to More Perfect Union’s request for comment on Smith’s story, Lyft said they “are unable to confirm that these alleged incidents occurred on the Lyft platform based on the information provided.”

The Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association wants to see a more robust reaction from rideshare corporations when driver assaults occur, including by instituting a policy to disable the accounts of passengers with proven safety violations. 

Lawyers for Uber were in federal court this week over a suit involving a Seattle-area driver, Cherno Ceesay, who was stabbed to death in 2020 by a couple he’d picked up who tried to steal his car. Uber argued that it bore no responsibility because drivers are free to reject any rider. But judges hearing the case appeared skeptical.

There are "mechanisms in place for Uber to minimize these sort of tragedies from happening," said Ninth Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, according to a transcript by legal news site Law360. "From the driver's perspective, he or she has no control over the identity of the individuals that they pick up. That's solely controlled by Uber."

In response to Uber's claim that it had no control over drivers, Judge Richard Paez said, "Doesn't Uber, though, control the amount of information that goes to the driver, when they're picking up somebody? Uber has complete control over that."

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More of our recent coverage of rideshare companies:

• In response to exploitation by Uber and Lyft, drivers in New York formed a worker-owned rideshare cooperative called The Drivers Cooperative. The app returns all profits to the drivers. The Coop has just announced plans to expand to Minneapolis. Watch our profile of the organization here.

• Rideshare companies no longer tell drivers the total cost of a ride. The lack of transparency is intentional — to prevent drivers from organizing for better pay. But we got our hands on data that reveals Uber is taking as much as 53 percent of the price ofeach ride. Drivers are using that data to fight back. Watch here.

• We profiled David Morrow, a 71-year-old Uber driver in Atlanta who was carjacked at gunpoint by a passenger. Uber initially refused to help him. Then, after being publicly shamed in a news report, the company made him an outrageous offer. See the full story here.