Over the past few years, the posts on r/UberEats, a subreddit dedicated, in part, to couriers’ working conditions, have increasingly centered on the threats of violence delivery drivers face. For instance, one driver posted an expletive-laced screenshot in which a customer threatened to kill them if they didn’t cancel an order-in-progress. “He called and said he was on his way to Wendy’s and looking for my car to murder me,” the courier wrote.
Another shared an experience in which they accidentally delivered a bag of McDonald’s takeout to the wrong building within a New York City apartment complex at 2 a.m.; after informing the customer of the mistake and assuring them they’d help get a refund, the customer shouted from their second-floor window that the driver deserved “a light beating.”
In a post from last year, titled “In regards to the uptick in recent posts related to courier drivers being assaulted/murdered,” one subreddit member asked other members to stop posting stories like that because they were depressing. “It's very discouraging to come here and see post after post about someone being killed, or assaulted,” they wrote. “If you guys want to discuss that, that's fine, but we can do it in one centralized thread, and not taint the overall environment of this subreddit.”
Instead of complying, users in the comments began a conversation about how drivers are keeping themselves safe. One wrote: “I keep a gun on me at all times while doing deliveries … There are horrible people out there just waiting for someone like me, a woman, alone, doing deliveries in the middle of the night. Not on my watch fool.”
This isn’t just an UberEats problem; as the rate of online food delivery has increased over the last five years — a trend that was then supercharged by the pandemic — new research shows that couriers are incredibly vulnerable to threats of violence, some of which have evolved into tragic national headlines. Now, some of the major food delivery providers are rolling out new technology intended to curb the rate of harassment, but will it be enough?
"He called and said he was on his way to Wendy’s and looking for my car to murder me."
In a 2023 study from Georgetown University, which was based off of in-depth interviews with 41 DC-based food delivery workers, researchers found that 41% of the workers had experienced verbal harassment or physical assault while on the job. In total, 51% of the workers with whom researchers spoke indicated “they have felt unsafe or feared for their physical well-being while engaged in delivery work.” Additionally, workers who are Black, Hispanic or Asian were more likely than white workers to share experiences of assault and harassment.
Many couriers also reported inaction from their employers in the face of harassment.
For instance, in 2022, Vanessa, a full-time delivery driver interviewed by Georgetown’s research team, survived a carjacking while picking up an order from a restaurant. She was attacked from behind, but was able to get free. However, before she called emergency services, Vanessa signed into the UberEats app to un-assign herself to the delivery order because she was concerned the platform would penalize her in the future. She didn’t tell the company that she had been assaulted.
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“I don’t think there would have been a point to report it,” Vanessa said. “I don’t think they would have done anything.”
The researchers noted in their report that they had heard this refrain over and over again about a lack of faith in delivery companies to help workers experiencing emergencies. “We find that many workers believe, as Vanessa does, that the companies will penalize them for disrupted or incomplete orders, even if the reason for the interruption is a verbal or physical assault,” they wrote. “A recent study shows that this fear is not unfounded for the sister industry of ride-hail: Drivers are often deactivated (or fired) after they report physical assaults or verbal abuses by passengers.”
Underpinning many couriers’ concerns about threats of violence are several high-profile murder cases in which food delivery workers have been killed while on the job. Last April, for instance, an UberEats driver was slain and dismembered while making a delivery in Florida. That same month, a DoorDash delivery driver was shot and killed after an argument in Akron.
In May 2023, the activist group Gig Workers Rising released a report that said, according to their research, 80 app-based workers have been “victims of homicides while on job between 2017 and 2022.” The majority were ride-hailing drivers, but at least 20 delivery workers were also killed, according to the report, which relied on press accounts, court records and police reports.
“Corporations like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart have transformed transportation and meal delivery, but too many of them have done so by exploiting their workers on the job,” they write. “Their growth-at-all-costs model has repeatedly failed to adequately address the most tragic human cost of their business: loss of life.”
They continue: “After a worker’s tragic death, the corporations for whom they worked often send ‘thoughts and prayers’ through news reporters, but do not consistently support families with basic protections like workers' compensation.This behavior is consistent with too many app corporations' core business model: cutting costs by avoiding compensation and protection of their workers. App workers are shut out of safety net programs like workers compensation and, despite how dangerous the work is, too often workers are left on their own to figure out strategies to protect themselves.”
To help address some of these concerns, DoorDash added an AI chat feature to its app to detect harassment between workers and customers. While DoorDash has implemented safety measures before, including an “emergency button” for drivers in 2022 and an earlier version of this harassment detection technology, this new feature, SafeChat+, is more adept at detecting the nuance of messages rather than simply relying on keyword detection.
"App workers are shut out of safety net programs like workers compensation and, despite how dangerous the work is, too often workers are left on their own to figure out strategies to protect themselves."
“If SafeChat+ detects an inappropriate or abusive conversation between a consumer and Dasher, Dashers will be given the option to quickly cancel the order without impacting ratings,” DoorDash wrote in a release. “If the order is already completed, the feature will automatically end any further chat to help prevent the situation from escalating. If a Dasher uses inappropriate or abusive language with a customer during a delivery, the customer can reach out to support via chat or phone to report the incident and receive assistance.”
However, many gig workers believe this is the very least these companies can do for employees who are often putting their lives on the line — literally — to deliver $15 worth of food. For instance, Gig Workers Rising maintains that while “murder is the extreme, the norm is exploitation.”
As such, the group issued a set of demands that go beyond in-app support, including compensation, no forced arbitration in the case of lawsuits, transparency about the rate of worker deaths and violent incidents and the ability to unionize.
“That this safety crisis is allowed to continue unabated is a function of too many corporations' business model — cutting costs by displacing cost and risk on to workers, and leaving families and workers on their own, even in the extreme case of workers being murdered on the job,” they write.
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