When it comes to ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft, regulators in Tampa and around the country have been particularly concerned about one major issue: the quality of driver background checks.
There have been a few high-profile cases of Uber drivers kidnapping or otherwise endangering passengers, and last month the district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles told Uber and Lyft (as well as Sidecar, another ride-sharing company) that they had misled customers by claiming that their background checks screen out anyone who has committed driving violations, including DUIs, as well as sexual assault and other criminal offenses. The D.A.'s said they didn't.
That prompted San Francisco-based Uber to hire former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's security company, Giuliani Partners, to review its background check policy.
Although the review is not yet complete, Giuliani went live yesterday with a progress report on what his company has investigated so far, and guess what? He thinks, all and all, Uber's background checks are pretty damn thorough.
The former NYC mayor writes that his team reviewed the key technology platforms and are performing data reviews and comparative analyses to measure the effectiveness of Uber's process.
"Fundamentally, the Uber domestic driver BGC process is sound and we believe represents a substantial improvement over the existing safety standards in the personal hire transportation world," he writes.
Guiliani writes that Uber itself realized earlier this year that it needed to centralize its policy and thus took such responsibilities away from some regional teams.
He also writes that Uber's background check policy now "is much more thorough than that of many companies conducting background checks in this industry. " He makes that claim by stating that the normal criminal check by many taxi services in major cities is a three- or five-year background check compared to Uber’s seven-year check;
Uber’s process is significantly, multi-dimensionally more thorough, and includes a review of driving records for the currently licensed state, a social trace to identify current and prior address, a multi-state criminal record review, a county criminal check for all counties in which the driver resided for the past seven years and a review of Federal criminal cases for all District courts where the driver resided for the past seven years.
Earlier this year Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission head Kyle Cockream, who worked with the County Sheriff's office for decades, said he knew for a fact that Uber wasn't going through the sheriff's office to review its drivers' backgrounds.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2014.