by Rachel Gideon
News shook Indiana University last week when the body of senior Hannah Wilson was discovered Friday morning at 8:30 in Needmore near Lemon Lake. The 22-year-old senior was last seen getting an Uber ride. Soon after finding her body, detectives arrested 49-year-old Daniel E. Messel on a preliminary charge of murder.
This recent murder has caused teens everywhere to question the safety of the Uber brand. Uber Midwest spokeswoman Brooke Anderson told the Herald Times Online that, “Messel is not a registered driver or user of Uber, and that the “the suspect in question has never had an association with Uber.”
This is only one of the many Uber related incidents related to the newly popular brand. In a recent article about the safety of Uber, ABC News Radio Online said that while all Uber drivers undergo background checks, recent incidents have riders on edge. Los Angeles police arrested an Uber driver last year for kidnapping a woman with the purpose of sexual assault. The same day another Uber driver in San Francisco was charged withpunching a passenger. Earlier this year, Uber was banned in New Delhi after a woman accused one of Uber’s drivers of raping her. Several weeks after the raping of the woman in New Delhi, Uber added a panic button to the app.
Despite the questionability of Uber, junior Kate Leahey believes that “Uber drivers are at a higher risk than their customers, because think about how many strangers they have in their car daily. We have like one driver a week, but they have like 20 people a day, and like three of those people can be a serial killer.”
Because fingerprints aren’t collected for the drivers, the background checks are “completely worthless,” said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The company repeats this misleading statement, giving consumers a false sense of security when deciding whether to get into a stranger’s car,” added Gascon.
According to Fox News, Uber reps claim the company uses a thorough background check system that goes back seven years with searches through county, federal, sex offender, and DMV records.
Despite the recent murder, junior Izzy Mattei still feels safe. When asked about the Uber safety policy, she shared, “I feel very confident in taking Uber, because the app has the picture of the driver which I always check before getting in the car.” She went on to say, “I don’t think I would ever take an Uber alone, and often when I do take Ubers it’s with friends.”
