Big questions about deleted camera footage in alleged Uber rider assault

One of the victims of an alleged spate of attacks on Uber riders has rejected the company’s investigation into an incident where she and her friends were assaulted and robbed.

Johannesburg resident Kayleigh Marx’s experience earlier last month was among at least seven cases reported to police about alleged attacks on Uber riders in Pretoria since the beginning of July.

Marx and her friends had booked an Uber just after 01:00 AM on Sunday, 9 July 2023.

Their pickup location was Lucky Rodrigo, a popular night-time spot in Menlo Park, which they visited after a Springboks rugby game against Australia at Loftus on Saturday evening.

She alleged that their Uber had driven to a different location than the guesthouse they had booked, and her friend immediately suspected trouble.

When they tried to lock the doors, the driver unlocked them.

“This happened repeatedly until the driver hit his hand away and then opened the cubby hole,” Marx told Sunday Times.

“He removed a canister of pepper spray and sprayed my friend in the eyes. Then he swung around, grabbed my iPhone and unlocked the doors again. ”

Two accomplices then emerged to assist the driver in the attack and threatened to shoot them, although guns were nowhere to be seen.

Marx managed to get away and ran back towards Lucky Rodrigo. The suspects fled when more friends at the restaurant came to the victims’ aid.

Marx’s account is just one of several in which people who used the service in Pretoria alleged they were assaulted by Uber drivers.

The e-hailing company quickly responded by saying it was investigating the cases internally and cooperating with law enforcement to get to the bottom of the incidents.

In a follow-up interview with Sunday Times, Uber general manager for Sub-Saharan Africa Kagiso Khaole alleged that Marx’s version of events was false.

He said her story contradicted the Uber driver’s account and their data. She and her co-passengers had likely gotten into the wrong car, Khaole said.

“The driver’s story matches the GPS points that we see. There were messages between the driver and the rider when the rider changed the drop-off point to Arcadia,” he said.

However, Marx has also denied they had changed the drop-off point to Arcadia, an area where she had never been.

Khaole said the car had a private dashboard camera, but Uber could not retrieve the video.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the footage because it has an automatic 72-hour cleanup,” Khaole said.

“By the time the matter was reported and we made that request, we weren’t able to get that.”

However, Marx told MyBroadband she had reported the incident to Uber and the police on Sunday, 9 July 2023, a few hours after the attack had occurred.

The first time she reported it with Uber was via an online agent.

“He sounded like he was American, so I’m not sure if he is a call centre agent from there,” she said.

After this, she reported it directly at Uber’s Parktown North offices on Monday, 10 July 2023.

Assuming the office closed at 17:00 on a weekday, it would mean the latest that Uber received notice of the attack would have been 40 hours after it occurred.

That means Uber must have taken more than a day — 32 hours — to raise the incident with the implicated driver and ask for the footage.

Marx returned to the Uber offices later in July and was told that the person who handled these incidents would call her back. She said this never happened.

Marx also told MyBroadband that she and her friends had double-checked that the number plate matched what they were shown on the app.

In addition, she maintains that the driver who had assaulted her fellow passengers was the same as the person shown in the picture on the app.

She provided MyBroadband with a screenshot of the Uber driver they had booked.

The trip status shown in the screenshot was “Failed”, suggesting it was cancelled at some point by either Marx or the driver.

MyBroadband asked Uber to respond to these counter-allegations, but it said it could not give more specifics about the incident.

The company only offered the same statement it had previously provided.

“We can confirm from the information available to us that the incidents were perpetrated by third-party individuals and not by drivers on the Uber platform, and in some of the cases reported, took place as a result of the alleged victims getting into the wrong vehicle,” Uber said.

“These incidents can happen, so we urge riders to verify their driver and vehicle details before entering the car from the app. Riders can also enable PIN verification without which a trip cannot start.”

In Marx’s case, the riders had not activated the PIN verification feature on their apps.

Uber did not address the issue of the 72-hour wipe, but did state that the dashboard camera footage did not belong to it.

The company has continued to insist that it believes the victims of these attacks had used third parties masquerading as Uber drivers.

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