Rideshare apps promised women a safer way home. A decade later, most women are staging fake phone calls before they get in the car.
The industry is facing a reckoning. A federal jury in Arizona recently hit Uber with an $8.5 million verdict in a sexual assault case, and more than 3,000 federal lawsuits are stacking up against major rideshare companies. In March 2026, Uber launched its nationwide Women Drivers feature, a program pitched as a direct response to rising safety concerns. The question now is whether these rollouts reflect real change or strategic optics.
Women want the rideshare convenience. But they no longer believe the companies providing it are looking out for them. A new survey from A Case For Women puts a number on that distrust: 59.3% of women have felt unsafe in a rideshare at least once, and the women using these services most often are the ones with the least faith in the system.
Key Findings:
- 59.3% of women have felt unsafe during a rideshare ride, with Gen Z reporting repeated incidents at nearly three times the rate of Baby Boomers.
- 72.3% of women use fake phone calls or deceptive texting as a safety tactic when riding alone at night.
- 65.8% believe rideshare companies prioritize profit over passenger safety, and only 8.2% think companies genuinely care.
- 35.6% of women chose not to report an unsafe incident, with 25.3% unsure if it was serious enough.
- 71.5% of women want rideshare safety regulated by law rather than left to company self-governance.
- 77.8% would stop using or reconsider a rideshare app tied to thousands of pending sexual assault lawsuits.
- 46.1% refuse to pay extra for a female driver, saying safety should not be a paid upgrade.
The Frequency Gap Nobody Is Talking About
Safety research often measures whether an incident has happened. The more revealing question is how often.
Among weekly rideshare users, 33% report feeling unsafe on multiple occasions, more than double the 15.4% reported by occasional users. Gen Z women, the heaviest users of the apps, are the most frequent targets of that repeated discomfort, with 29.6% reporting multiple unsafe experiences compared to 10.3% of Baby Boomers.
The women who depend on rideshares the most face the most risk. More rides means more exposure. For women who depend on rideshares to get to work, school, or home, opting out is not a real option. The risk gets absorbed into the commute.
Why Most Women Stay Silent
Reporting systems rely on the assumption that users will flag problems. Most women do not.
35.6% of women who felt unsafe never reported the incident. The top reason was not logistics or fear of legal exposure. It was self-doubt. 25.3% said they were not sure the incident was serious enough. Another 16.7% did not trust the company to take it seriously, and 13.9% feared retaliation from the driver.
High-profile cases fuel that doubt in both directions. When an Uber driver in Houston was recently charged with soliciting a minor, the story became another reminder that the worst-case scenarios women imagine are not hypothetical. Yet many still hesitate to report smaller incidents, unsure where the line sits between uncomfortable and criminal.
The reporting gap distorts the data itself. When a quarter of women second-guess their own discomfort, the numbers companies use to measure safety are structurally incomplete.
The Fake Phone Call Has Become Standard Protocol
The fake phone call is one of the most common safety tools women use, and it has nothing to do with the apps themselves.
72.3% of women use fake phone calls or deceptive texting when riding alone at night. Among Gen Z, the every-ride rate hits 43.6%. Among Hispanic women, it reaches 39%. The behavior has become so routine that most women do not describe it as a workaround. They describe it as riding.
Safety has been outsourced to the passenger. The company provides the app. The woman provides the workaround.
Women Want the Law Involved, Not the Company
Corporate safety features depend on one idea: trust the platform to police itself. Women are rejecting that idea at scale.
71.5% of women want rideshare safety regulated by law. Support crosses every demographic group in the survey. Baby Boomers lead at 82.8%. Weekly riders, the group companies most want to retain, back legal regulation at 73.6%. Even among high earners, the appetite for third-party oversight is overwhelming.
The pressure is no longer coming from passengers alone. Regulators, insurers, and courts are beginning to treat rideshare safety as a structural issue rather than a customer service one.
Consensus this strong across age, income, and education is rare. It signals a shift from consumer preference to public demand.
Safety as a Paid Upgrade Is Hitting a Wall
When Uber rolled out Women Drivers, the pitch positioned female-matching as a premium experience. Women, particularly high earners, are pushing back on the framing itself.
46.1% of women refuse to pay extra for a female driver, saying safety should be built in. Among women earning $250,000 or more, that figure climbs to 72.7%. Postgraduate women land at 54.2%. The women most able to absorb a surcharge are the ones most likely to reject the concept.
The message to companies is direct. Tiered safety is not innovation. It is an admission that the baseline product was never safe enough.
Convenience Is Not the Loyalty Shield Companies Assume
Rideshare executives have long operated on a theory that convenience beats concern. The survey shows the theory is failing.
77.8% of women would stop using or reconsider a rideshare app tied to thousands of pending sexual assault lawsuits. 44.3% would delete the app immediately. Among women with less than a high school diploma, the immediate-deletion rate climbs to 68.3%, suggesting that even women with the fewest transportation alternatives are prepared to walk.
Only 4.8% of women say they would keep riding regardless. The loyalty companies counted on is thinner than their marketing suggests.
Gen Z Is Angry, and They Are Still Taking the Precautions
The generational split points to a shift in mindset, not a shift in behavior.
49.2% of women overall describe extra safety precautions as simply the reality of being a woman. Baby Boomers lead that resignation at 65.5%. But among Gen Z, 37.4% call it outrageous that they have to take these steps at all, while also being the generation most likely to take them.
Younger women are not accepting the trade their mothers accepted. They are taking the precautions because they have to, while refusing to call the requirement normal. The gap between what they do and what they believe is where the story goes next.
Summary
The rideshare contract women signed a decade ago was simple. Press a button, get home safe. The contract has been rewritten by lawsuits, unreported incidents, and the safety tactics women now use by default.
Women are not asking for perfection. They are asking for a baseline, one built into the product, backed by law, and paid for by the companies profiting from their rides. The data shows a public that still wants the service and no longer believes the story the service has been telling about itself.
The next round of rideshare safety will be decided in courtrooms, state legislatures, and consumer behavior. Women have already made their position clear. The open question is how long the companies take to meet them there.
Methodology
To understand how Americans approach rideshare safety, A Case For Women surveyed 1,000 adult women via Pollfish across the country who use rideshare services. Participants answered a series of questions about their experiences with safety incidents, reporting behavior, trust in rideshare companies, personal safety tactics, and views on regulation and corporate accountability. Responses were analyzed by demographic groups, including age, income, education, ethnicity, and usage frequency, to identify trends and disparities.
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