Washington Dog Injury Claim Insights

Waymo Is Coming to Seattle: What Riders Should Know Before the First Driverless Ride

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 22:49:21 GMT

Taxi vs. Uber/Lyft Safety: Why There's No National Matchup

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:01:37 GMT

Taxi vs. Uber/Lyft Safety: Why There Still Isn’t a Clean National Comparison

People routinely search for a simple answer to whether taxis or rideshare vehicles are safer. The federal data do not support a clean nationwide winner. The problem is not a complete absence of safety information; it is that the two systems are measured through fragmented and incompatible datasets.

The comparison sounds easier than it is

A fair safety comparison would ideally measure the same kinds of events over the same years, use comparable exposure data and cover a representative share of trips nationwide. That dataset does not currently exist for taxis and rideshare services.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in 2026 that available federal, local and company data did not provide a complete nationwide picture of assaults involving rideshare and taxi trips. That alone makes sweeping “safer than” claims difficult to defend.

Rideshare companies disclose more standardized national data — but with limits

Uber and Lyft publish safety reports covering defined categories of serious incidents. Those reports provide nationwide company data that are unusually detailed for transportation services. But they are company-produced, use specified categories and are released on reporting cycles that do not always provide current-year data.

GAO noted that comparable public assault counts for 2023 through 2025 were not available from selected rideshare companies as of June 2026. So even within rideshare, the latest complete public picture can lag behind the current date.

Taxi data are scattered across local systems

Taxi oversight has historically been local. Cities may license drivers, inspect vehicles, collect complaints or regulate dispatch companies, while another jurisdiction uses a different structure. A national taxi company can provide its own incident data, but that does not represent the entire U.S. taxi industry.

GAO obtained nonpublic assault information from only a small number of taxi companies and expressly cautioned that the information was not nationally representative. One national company reported a limited number of verified physical and sexual assaults from 2021 through 2025, but that is not a nationwide taxi rate.

Police records do not neatly solve the problem

Police data can contain assaults involving drivers or passengers, but transportation mode may not be captured in a standardized field. An officer’s narrative might mention Uber, Lyft, rideshare, cab or taxi without placing the incident into a consistent national category.

Local crime records are therefore useful for city-level research and incident reconstruction, but combining them into a national mode-to-mode safety rate requires assumptions the source data were not built to support.

Crash safety is a separate question from assault safety

Another source of confusion is the word “safe.” Assault risk, fatal-crash risk, injury-crash risk, driver screening, vehicle condition and accessibility are different dimensions. A transportation mode could perform better on one measure and worse on another.

Research on rideshare availability has even produced findings that appear to point in different directions depending on the outcome measured: some studies associate rideshare availability with fewer alcohol-related fatalities, while local studies have found increased injury-crash exposure with greater rideshare activity. Those findings are not a taxi comparison and should not be turned into one.

The better answer is transparent about the limits

A responsible taxi-versus-rideshare article can still be useful. It can compare screening systems in a specific city, explain vehicle and insurance rules, identify available assault or crash datasets and describe what each source actually measures.

What it should not do is turn fragmented numbers into a national ranking that the evidence cannot support. As of 2026, the honest answer remains that the United States lacks one unified dataset capable of declaring taxis, Uber or Lyft categorically safer nationwide.

Sources

Uber vs. Lyft Safety Reports: Why the Numbers Are Hard to Compare

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:35:48 GMT

Uber vs. Lyft Safety Reports: Why the Numbers Are Harder to Compare Than They Look

Uber and Lyft both publish safety data, but the reports are not a scoreboard. Different reporting periods, definitions and disclosure practices can make two accurate numbers answer different questions.

A safety report starts with definitions, not the headline number

Uber’s U.S. safety reports and Lyft’s transparency reports cover serious incidents connected to their platforms, including sexual assault, fatal physical assaults and fatal motor-vehicle crashes. That sounds comparable at first glance. The problem is that the details matter: which years are included, which categories are counted, how incidents are classified and what denominator is used.

Lyft’s July 2024 report, for example, covered 2020 through 2022 and focused on defined categories of serious safety incidents. Lyft said the incidents included in that report occurred in a very small fraction of rides. Uber’s reports also use defined categories and explain their methodology. A percentage drawn from one report should not be compared mechanically with a percentage from another unless the underlying definitions match.

Sexual-assault categories are especially easy to misread

Safety reports do not simply contain one universally defined number called “sexual assaults.” Companies may group conduct using a taxonomy that distinguishes categories by the type of contact or conduct reported. A report can therefore appear to show a dramatic difference depending on whether a writer uses only the most serious categories or includes a broader range of sexual misconduct.

That is one reason the Government Accountability Office did not treat the public company reports as a complete national assault database. A company can accurately report what falls within its own methodology while the public still lacks a uniform cross-company dataset.

The year ranges do not always move together

Another problem is timing. GAO reported in 2026 that comparable public rideshare assault counts for 2023 through 2025 were not yet available from the selected companies as of June 2026. Lyft has separately said its next safety report will cover 2023 through 2025 and that it plans broader disclosure across sexual-assault and misconduct categories.

Until reporting cycles line up, a current-looking webpage can contain data ending several years earlier. That does not make the report useless. It does mean a reader should check the covered period before treating the numbers as a description of present-day risk.

The denominator can change the story too

Ride counts are often used to show how rare a category of incident is. That is legitimate context, but denominators deserve the same scrutiny as incident counts. A rate “per trip” answers a different question from a rate per passenger-mile, per active user or per hour of exposure.

Large platforms also complete enormous numbers of trips. A low per-trip rate can coexist with a substantial absolute number of reported incidents. Both facts can be true at the same time.

Company reports are useful — just not independent audits of the entire industry

Uber and Lyft safety reports provide information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. They describe incidents reported to the companies, explain safety programs and create a public record that can be compared over time within the limits of each methodology.

But they remain company-produced reports. GAO’s 2026 review is valuable precisely because it places those disclosures beside police data, federal information and other sources and then identifies what is still missing.

The responsible comparison is narrower than “Which app is safer?”

A defensible Uber-versus-Lyft safety comparison should start by matching the same years and the same incident definitions. It should state whether the number comes from company reports, police data or another source. And where the reporting does not line up, it should say so instead of manufacturing a winner.

That answer may be less satisfying than a simple ranking. It is also much closer to what the public evidence can actually support.

Sources

How Much Rideshare Assault Data Is Actually Public?

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 23:21:42 GMT

How Much Rideshare Assault Data Is Actually Public? GAO Says the Picture Is Still Incomplete

Rideshare companies publish safety reports, police departments record crimes, and federal agencies collect pieces of the story. Yet a July 2026 Government Accountability Office report concluded that the United States still does not have a complete nationwide picture of assaults involving rideshare and taxi trips.

The data gap is itself one of the most important findings

Congress required recurring federal review of rideshare and taxi safety through Sami’s Law. In its July 2026 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office examined company data, local police records, federal information and safety practices. Its conclusion was not that assaults cannot be measured at all. It was that the available sources do not combine into a complete national dataset.

That matters because public discussions about rideshare safety often jump from one number to a national conclusion. A company report may cover only certain categories. A police database may not reliably identify whether a ride involved Uber, Lyft or a taxi. A federal crime dataset may not contain the trip-level information needed to isolate ride-hailing incidents.

What the companies had publicly reported

GAO reported that two selected rideshare companies publicly disclosed a combined 52 fatal physical assaults and 4,469 reports in the five most serious sexual-assault categories for 2021 and 2022. Those incidents occurred across billions of rides. GAO also described a much larger number of reports falling into other sexual-assault or sexual-misconduct categories from one company.

The denominator is important, but so is the category definition. A reader cannot responsibly compare two companies by pulling one headline number from each unless the covered years, incident definitions and ride counts line up.

The missing years are a major problem for trend claims

As of June 2026, GAO said selected rideshare companies had not publicly released comparable assault counts for 2023 through 2025. That means a simple question such as “Are rideshare assaults becoming more or less common?” did not have a clean current national answer from public company data.

GAO also reported that three rideshare companies declined its request for nonpublic assault data. That does not prove the unreleased data would show a particular trend. It does mean outside researchers and the public are working with an incomplete record.

Police data add detail without solving the national problem

GAO analyzed local records in Los Angeles and Chicago to understand what police data can contribute. The agency identified hundreds of rideshare- or taxi-related assaults in the Los Angeles data it reviewed and more than one hundred in Chicago during the periods studied. In both datasets, those incidents represented less than one percent of all assaults recorded in the relevant jurisdiction and period.

Local records can help describe where incidents happened and how law enforcement classified them. But local systems use different coding practices, and rideshare involvement may appear in narrative text rather than a standardized field. That makes city-to-city comparisons difficult.

Taxi data are even thinner

GAO’s taxi review illustrates the same limitation. One national taxi company provided verified physical- and sexual-assault counts for 2021 through 2025, but GAO cautioned that the selected companies and available records were not nationally representative. There is no single nationwide taxi dataset that functions as a clean control group for Uber and Lyft.

That is why “taxis are safer” and “rideshare is safer” can both be overconfident statements when presented as national facts. The available evidence can answer narrower questions, but the broad comparison is still constrained by inconsistent reporting.

What a careful safety claim should say

The strongest conclusion from the 2026 federal review is not that rideshare is uniquely dangerous or uniquely safe. It is that serious incidents are measurable, companies have added safety tools, and the public data still have meaningful gaps.

For riders, drivers, lawyers and policymakers, that incomplete picture has practical consequences. It affects how trends are evaluated, how platform claims are compared, and how confidently anyone can say that one transportation mode or company is safer than another.

Sources

Wenjian Zhuo: The Rideshare Driver Whose Own Dashcam Helped Convict Him

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:35:57 GMT

Wenjian Zhuo’s dashcam caught a stranger loading 207 pounds of marijuana into his van. It also recorded the conversation prosecutors used to convict him. Here’s how a rideshare driver’s own footage ended up cutting both ways.

In January 2025, Wenjian Zhuo accepted what he believed was a long-distance passenger job. The customer told him to expect one rider with six or seven pieces of luggage. Zhuo left Queens before dawn and drove nearly 400 miles to a pickup point near the Canadian border.

No passenger was waiting when he arrived.

Instead, another man loaded boxes, bags and suitcases into Zhuo’s Toyota Sienna, then told him he would not be making the trip. Zhuo called the customer and confirmed that he was now being paid to transport the cargo alone. He started driving back toward New York City.

About 22 minutes later, Border Patrol pulled him over. Inside the van were 211 vacuum-sealed packages containing approximately 207 pounds of marijuana.

Zhuo gave investigators access to his phone and the cameras inside and outside his van. The footage supported much of his account. It showed that another man had loaded the cargo. It captured identifying information that helped investigators find that man. It also showed Zhuo cooperating after the stop and offering to help agents catch the person waiting for the delivery.

But the cameras had recorded something else: a phone conversation Zhuo had while driving away from the pickup. That conversation became central to the government’s case against him.

The result is more difficult to explain than the short clips circulating online suggest. The evidence supports Zhuo’s claim that he did not arrive knowing he was about to transport marijuana. It also shows why a jury concluded that he began to suspect the truth and deliberately avoided confirming it.

The 22 minutes that changed the case

The call to Zhuo’s friend began as a request for help. Zhuo described the unexpected cargo, the unusual pickup and the customer’s behavior. He wondered aloud whether the boxes contained something illegal.

Then he raised marijuana as a possibility.

According to the federal court’s May 2026 order, Zhuo mentioned marijuana several times. He asked what it smelled like and said he noticed a fragrant odor in the van. He questioned why someone would spend nearly $1,000 to have the cargo driven to New York City. He joked that the contents might be worth millions and that he could sell them and retire. He also suggested that his messages with the customer could prove he was “only a delivery guy” if he were stopped.

The friend told Zhuo to open a box and inspect it. The court found that the suggestion was made three times and that Zhuo declined each time. Zhuo continued driving toward the delivery address until Border Patrol stopped him about 18 miles from the pickup.

There are understandable reasons why a driver would hesitate to open sealed customer property. Zhuo was far from home, spoke limited English and had only recently learned that the passenger was not coming. His customer had told him not to open the packages. His attorneys later argued that he was worried about tampering with property entrusted to him and believed his chat history would show that he had accepted an ordinary transportation job.

He also had hours of driving ahead of him and very little time to decide what to do. The government stopped him before he had been on the road for half an hour.

The jury nevertheless heard a man identify marijuana as a serious possibility, discuss how he might explain the situation if caught, refuse repeated suggestions to check and continue toward the agreed delivery point. Those 22 minutes gave prosecutors a different case than the one suggested by the loading footage alone.

Why the footage did not clear him

Zhuo was initially indicted for both conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute. The government dismissed the conspiracy charge before trial.

That matters. Prosecutors did not obtain a conviction based on proof that Zhuo had planned the shipment, crossed the Canadian border or previously agreed to participate with Montour. The February 2026 trial concerned the marijuana already inside Zhuo’s van and what he understood while he controlled it.

Federal law generally requires the government to prove that a defendant knowingly possessed a controlled substance. Knowledge can also be established through a doctrine commonly called willful blindness or conscious avoidance . It applies when a person believes there is a high probability that a fact is true and deliberately avoids learning the truth.

The standard is supposed to require more than carelessness. The trial judge instructed the jury that Zhuo could not be convicted merely because he was negligent, foolish or mistaken. Jurors had to decide whether his uncertainty was the result of a conscious decision not to confirm what he already strongly suspected.

Prosecutors focused on the sequence captured by Zhuo’s own recording: the job abruptly changed from passenger transportation to cargo delivery; Zhuo noticed the smell and unusual circumstances; he repeatedly named marijuana; he discussed evidence he could use to distance himself from the cargo; and he refused to inspect it after his friend urged him to do so.

The jury convicted him of possession with intent to distribute after deliberating for approximately three and a half hours.

Zhuo later asked the judge to set the verdict aside for insufficient evidence. His new attorney argued that suspicion was not knowledge, 22 minutes was not enough time to establish deliberate avoidance, and Zhuo had legitimate reasons not to open a customer’s packages. The judge denied the motion. In the court’s view, a rational jury could find that Zhuo strongly suspected marijuana was inside and chose to remain uncertain while continuing the delivery.

What the dashcam established in Zhuo’s favor

The conviction does not erase what the footage showed for the defense.

Zhuo arrived expecting a passenger. Montour, not Zhuo, brought the marijuana to the van and loaded most of the cargo. The cameras captured Montour and the Ontario license plate on his truck, helping investigators identify him. There was no evidence presented that Zhuo knew Montour before the pickup.

Montour was later arrested and pleaded guilty to possession. The unidentified person who arranged the trip through WeChat had not been located by the time of Zhuo’s trial.

Zhuo also behaved differently after the stop than many people would expect from a willing participant in a drug shipment. He immediately described the job to agents through Google Translate. He gave them access to the phone containing his customer communications and explained how to retrieve the recordings from his camera system. He even offered to continue to the delivery location under law-enforcement supervision so agents could arrest the recipient. They declined because it was too dangerous.

None of those facts required the jury to acquit him under a conscious-avoidance theory. They do, however, make the case genuinely troubling. Zhuo’s cooperation helped establish that he was not the person who arranged or loaded the shipment. The same evidence then allowed prosecutors to narrow their focus to the brief period after he became suspicious.

The plea offer he could not bring himself to accept

Before trial, prosecutors offered Zhuo an extraordinary way out. He could plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of no more than 30 grams of marijuana for personal use and receive time served. The offer was specifically structured to help him avoid deportation.

The offer bore little resemblance to the 94 kilograms found in his van. Zhuo had already spent more than a year in custody, and his attorney advised him to accept it.

He refused because he continued to maintain that he had committed no crime. He was also afraid that even a minor conviction could later be used against him as a lawful permanent resident. At a pretrial hearing, he told the judge that he wanted justice after spending hundreds of days in jail for something he said he had not done.

Rejecting the offer did not prove his innocence, just as making it did not establish that prosecutors believed their case was false. It does show how differently Zhuo understood the choice before him. The government saw a resolution designed to let him go home. Zhuo saw a permanent admission that he had knowingly possessed drugs.

He chose a trial and lost.

Eighteen months away from a daughter he had never held

Zhuo’s partner, Minxing Zou, was eight months pregnant when he was arrested. Their daughter, Selene, was born in February 2025 while he remained in custody. Zou asked jail officials to allow him to attend the birth and offered to cover the expense, but the request was denied.

Zhuo was also denied pretrial release. Prosecutors argued that an immigration detainer made him a flight risk because immigration authorities could take custody of him if he were released. Montour, meanwhile, was released to inpatient treatment several weeks after his arrest and later remained out of jail while awaiting sentencing.

By the time Zhuo went to trial, his daughter was turning one. He had chosen not to meet her for the first time inside a jail visitation room. His family reported spending approximately $60,000 on his defense, and the government pursued a separate forfeiture action involving the Toyota Sienna he used for work.

On July 28, 2026, the court sentenced Zhuo to 27 months, with credit for the approximately 18 months he had already served. He declined to express remorse for conduct he still says he did not knowingly commit. His attorney has announced plans to appeal. Even after completing the sentence, Zhuo faces the possibility of deportation because of the felony drug conviction.

What this case says about independent driving work

Zhuo was often described online as an Uber driver, but this was not an Uber trip. He had previously driven for the company and was operating his own independent service when the WeChat booking arrived.

That distinction did not determine the criminal case. Uber or Lyft would not have provided Zhuo with a federal criminal-defense attorney, and a platform record would not have changed what was said during the call with his friend.

The off-app arrangement did leave him without a verified rider account, platform dispatch record or company-held trip history showing how the job had originally been presented. His customer communications and camera footage were the only contemporaneous records of the agreement. Fortunately for Zhuo, those records were unusually detailed. Unfortunately, they preserved the damaging conversation too.

For rideshare drivers and passengers, that is one practical lesson worth keeping. When a crash, assault or insurance dispute follows a trip, app status and trip records can establish who requested the ride, when it began, where it was going and which insurance policy was active. Those questions usually arise in civil claims rather than federal criminal prosecutions, but the importance of preserving the record is the same.

Where the case stands

Wenjian Zhuo remains convicted of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. He was not convicted of conspiracy or of personally smuggling marijuana across the Canadian border, despite the Department of Justice using “smuggling” in the headline of its press release.

The dashcam did not neatly prove his guilt or innocence. It documented a driver arriving for one kind of job and being handed another. It helped law enforcement identify the man who loaded the drugs. It showed Zhuo trying to make sense of a situation he had not expected. It also recorded the suspicions, jokes and refusals that prosecutors used to establish conscious avoidance.

That is why the case continues to disturb people. Zhuo may have been completely unaware of the shipment when he began the trip and still have crossed a legal line during the minutes after the boxes entered his van. The jury concluded that he did. Whether 22 uncertain minutes should carry a felony conviction, a prison sentence and the possible loss of his home in the United States is the question his appeal will now have to confront.

A note for Washington rideshare drivers and passengers

The Law Office of J.D. Smith does not handle federal criminal-defense cases and is not involved in Zhuo’s case. We represent people in Washington civil matters involving rideshare accidents, driver injuries and insurance-coverage disputes.

If an insurer is disputing whether a driver was logged into an app, whether a trip had started or which rideshare policy applies, call 206-588-8529 to discuss the available records and coverage.

Sources and publication notes

United States v. Zhuo, Decision and Order denying the Rule 29 motion , May 26, 2026.
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York , February 19, 2026.
Jennifer Gonnerman, “How a Chinese Immigrant Driver Got Entangled in a Drug Bust” , The New Yorker, July 23, 2026.
Jennifer Gonnerman, “A Severe Punishment in a Surreal Drug Case” , The New Yorker, July 29, 2026.
Randall Yip, “Rideshare Driver Gets 27 Months for Drugs Loaded by Passenger” , AsAmNews, July 30, 2026.

Video: The New Yorker, via YouTube

Court records spell his name Wenjian Zhuo. Some social media posts and videos refer to him as Wenzian Zhou.

A passenger trip that changed without warning

Zhuo was 31 and living in Queens when he accepted the job. He had previously driven for Uber but was working independently by then, finding customers through referrals and Chinese social platforms including RedNote and WeChat. He drove international students, tourists and private clients, and had started building a small travel business.

The January 22 trip looked like another private booking. The customer agreed to pay $940, including gas and tolls, and sent a $100 deposit. Zhuo believed he would pick up a passenger in northern New York and drive that person to Manhattan. After approximately seven hours on the road, Zhuo reached a gas station near the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation. He waited several more hours before a man named Eric Montour arrived in a white pickup truck. Montour led him to a nearby property and loaded twelve items into the van, including cardboard boxes, luggage, bags and a plastic bin.

Zhuo had expected the passenger to be Chinese. Montour was not, and the two could barely communicate. Once the loading was finished, Montour did not get into the van.

Zhuo contacted the customer, who told him to bring the cargo to New York City without the passenger. He accepted the change and left. Thirty seconds after ending that call, he phoned a fellow driver for advice.

卓文建: 这名网约车司机的行车记录仪成了给他定罪的证据

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:38:13 GMT

卓文坚（Wenjian Zhuo）的行车记录仪拍下了一名陌生人将207磅大麻装入他货车的画面。该设备还录下了后来被检方用于将其定罪的对话内容。以下讲述了这位网约车司机的这段自拍影像如何最终成了“双刃剑”。

2025年1月，卓文坚（Wenjian Zhuo，音译）接下了一单他以为是长途载客的生意。客户告诉他，只有一名乘客，但随身携带了六七件行李。卓文坚在黎明前离开皇后区，驱车近400英里，前往靠近加拿大边境的一个接载点。

他抵达时，并没有乘客在等候。

取而代之的是，另一名男子将各种箱子、袋子和手提箱装进了卓文坚的丰田塞纳（Toyota Sienna）面包车，并告知他自己不会随行。卓文坚致电客户，确认这趟行程改为仅运送货物。随后，他驾车踏上返回纽约市的旅程。

约22分钟后，他被边境巡逻队拦截。车内装有211个真空密封包裹，总重约207磅（约94公斤）的大麻。

卓文坚配合调查人员，提供了手机以及车内外摄像头的访问权限。监控录像证实了他大部分的陈述：画面显示确实是另一名男子装载了货物，且记录下的身份信息帮助调查人员找到了该男子；录像还显示，他在被拦截后表现配合，并主动提出协助探员抓捕等待收货的人。

然而，摄像头也记录下了另一段内容：卓文坚在离开接载点后的驾驶途中进行了一次通话。这段对话成为了检方指控他的关键证据。

案件的实际情况比网上流传的短视频所呈现的要复杂得多。证据支持了卓文坚的说法，即他抵达时并不知道自己即将运送大麻；但证据同时也揭示了为何陪审团认定他后来开始怀疑真相，却刻意回避去证实这一点。

改变了案件走向的那22分钟

卓（Zhuo）打给朋友的那通电话起初是为了寻求帮助。他描述了那批意料之外的货物、不同寻常的取货过程以及客户的言行举止，并当即表达了对箱内物品是否违法的疑虑。

随后，他提到了箱子里装的可能是大麻。

根据联邦法院2026年5月发布的命令，卓多次提到了大麻。他询问大麻是什么气味，并表示自己闻到了货车内有一股香气。他质疑为何有人愿意花近1000美元将这批货物运往纽约市。他开玩笑说，箱内物品可能价值数百万美元，自己或许可以将其变卖后退休。他还提到，如果途中被拦截，他与客户的聊天记录可以证明自己“只是个送货的”。

朋友建议卓打开一个箱子检查一下。法院认定，该建议被提议了三次，但卓每次都予以拒绝。卓继续驾车前往送货地点，直到在距离取货点约18英里处被边境巡逻队拦截。

司机对于是否打开客户密封的物品犹豫不决，这是可以理解的。当时卓身处异地，英语水平有限，且刚得知原本同行的乘客不会来了。客户曾叮嘱他不要打开包裹。他的辩护律师后来辩称，他担心擅动受托物品，并认为聊天记录足以证明他接下的是一份普通的运输工作。

此外，他当时面临着数小时的长途驾驶，留给他做决定的时间非常有限。他在上路不到半小时后便遭到了拦截。

尽管如此，陪审团还是听到了这样一番对话：一名男子认定箱内极有可能是大麻，讨论了若被查获该如何解释，拒绝了反复提出的检查建议，并继续驶向约定的交货地点。这短短22分钟的通话，让检方掌握了一个与仅凭装货监控画面所呈现的截然不同的案情。

为何这段影像未能洗清他的嫌疑

卓（Zhuo）最初被指控犯有共谋罪以及持有并意图分销毒品罪。在审判前，检方撤销了共谋罪的指控。

这一点至关重要。检方并未通过证明卓策划了这批货物的运输、越过加拿大边境或此前与蒙图尔（Montour）达成参与协议来获得定罪。2026年2月的审判主要围绕卓的面包车内已有的那批大麻，以及他在控制车辆期间的认知情况展开。

联邦法律通常要求检方证明被告明知自己持有管制物品。“明知”这一要件也可以通过通常被称为“蓄意视而不见”（willful blindness）或“有意回避”（conscious avoidance）的法律原则来确立。当一个人认为某事极有可能是事实，却故意避免去了解真相时，该原则便适用。

该标准的认定要求不仅仅是疏忽大意。主审法官指示陪审团，不能仅仅因为卓疏忽、愚蠢或判断失误就判定他有罪。陪审员必须判定，他的不确定状态究竟是源于疏忽，还是源于一种有意识的决定——即不去确认他内心已强烈怀疑的事实。

检方重点关注了卓自己的录音中所记录的一系列情况：这项工作突然从客运变成了货运；卓注意到了气味和异常情况；他多次提到“大麻”一词；他讨论了如何利用证据来撇清自己与货物的关系；并且在朋友劝说他检查货物时，他拒绝了这一提议。

经过约三个半小时的审议，陪审团裁定他犯有持有并意图分销毒品罪。

卓随后请求法官撤销该裁决，理由是证据不足。他的新任辩护律师辩称，怀疑并不等同于明知；22分钟的时间不足以确立“有意回避”的事实；且卓有正当理由不去打开客户的包裹。法官驳回了这一动议。法院认为，理性的陪审团完全可以认定：卓当时强烈怀疑车内装有大麻，却选择在继续运送的过程中维持一种“不确定”的状态。

行车记录仪证实了哪些对朱某有利的情况

T尽管最终被定罪，但这并不能抹去监控录像所呈现的、有利于辩方的事实。

Zhuo 抵达现场时，原本以为只是去接一名乘客。是 Montour（而非 Zhuo）将大麻带到了货车旁，并装载了大部分货物。监控摄像头拍下了 Montour 及其卡车上的安大略省车牌，这帮助调查人员确认了他的身份。没有任何证据表明 Zhuo 在此次提货前就认识 Montour。

Montour 随后被捕，并承认了持有毒品的罪名。至于那个通过微信安排此次行程的身份不明者，直到 Zhuo 受审时仍未被找到。

在被拦截盘查后，Zhuo 的表现也与人们通常预想的“自愿参与毒品运输者”的行为大相径庭。他立即通过谷歌翻译向执法人员说明了这项工作的情况。他主动交出了存有与客户沟通记录的手机，并解释了如何调取车载监控系统的录像。他甚至提出在执法人员的监视下继续前往交货地点，以便警方能逮捕接货人，但警方因风险过高而拒绝了这一提议。

尽管存在上述事实，陪审团并未依据“有意回避”（conscious avoidance）的法律理论判其无罪。然而，这些事实确实让本案显得颇为棘手。Zhuo 的配合有助于证实他并非此次运输的组织者或装货人；而同样的证据也让检方得以将关注重点缩小到他产生怀疑之后的那一短暂时间段。

他无法下定决心接受的那份认罪协议

B在审判前，检方为卓（Zhuo）提供了一个非同寻常的解决方案：他可以承认犯有持有不超过30克大麻供个人使用的轻罪，并以已服刑期抵扣刑罚。这一方案的特别设计旨在帮助他避免被驱逐出境。

这一提议与在他货车中查获的94公斤大麻形成了鲜明对比。卓当时已被羁押一年多，律师也建议他接受这一提议。

但他拒绝了，因为他始终坚称自己无罪。他还担心，即便只是轻罪定罪，日后也可能对他作为合法永久居民的身份产生不利影响。在审前听证会上，他告诉法官，自己因未曾犯下的罪行在狱中度过了数百个日日夜夜，如今他只想要一个公道。

拒绝这一提议并不证明他无罪，正如检方提出该方案也不代表他们认为自己的指控不实一样。但这确实反映出卓对摆在面前的选择有着截然不同的理解。在政府看来，这是一个旨在让他重获自由的解决方案；而在卓看来，这无异于永久承认自己曾明知故犯地持有毒品。

他选择了接受审判，结果败诉。

与从未抱过的女儿分别了十八个月

Zhuo 被捕时，他的伴侣 Minxing Zou 已怀孕八个月。他们的女儿 Selene 于 2025 年 2 月出生，当时 Zhuo 仍处于羁押状态。Zhuo 曾请求看守所允许他出席分娩过程并提出自费承担相关费用，但该请求遭到拒绝。

Zhuo 的审前释放请求也被驳回。检方辩称，由于存在移民拘留令，一旦获释他可能会被移民部门接管并拘留，因此存在潜逃风险。相比之下，Montour 在被捕数周后获释接受住院治疗，随后在等待判决期间一直处于非羁押状态。

Zhuo 受审时，他的女儿已快满一岁。他选择不在看守所的探视室里与女儿初次见面。据其家人称，他们为他的辩护花费了约 6 万美元；此外，政府还针对他用于工作的丰田 Sienna 汽车提起了单独的没收诉讼。

2026 年 7 月 28 日，法院判处 Zhuo 27 个月监禁，并扣除其已服刑的约 18 个月刑期。对于自己坚称并非蓄意实施的违法行为，他拒绝表示悔意。他的律师已宣布计划提起上诉。即便服刑期满，Zhuo 仍面临被驱逐出境的可能性，因为他被判犯有重罪毒品相关罪行。

这起案例揭示了关于独立驾驶工作的哪些信息？

尽管网上常称卓（Zhuo）为Uber司机，但这并非一次通过Uber平台进行的行程。他此前确实曾为该公司开车，但在接到那笔微信预约订单时，他正以独立司机的身份提供服务。

这种身份上的区别并未左右这起刑事案件的走向。即便是在Uber或Lyft平台上接单，这些公司也不会为卓指派联邦刑事辩护律师；而且，平台记录也无法改变他在与朋友通话时的言论。

这种绕开平台直接安排行程的做法，导致他无法提供经平台验证的乘客账户信息、平台调度记录或公司留存的行程历史（即记录订单最初发布方式的数据）。关于该行程约定的唯一同期记录，仅限于他与客户的沟通内容及车载摄像头的影像资料。对卓而言，幸运的是这些记录异常详尽；不幸的是，其中也保留了那段对他不利的对话内容。

对于网约车司机和乘客来说，这是一个值得铭记的实用教训。一旦行程中发生车祸、袭击事件或保险纠纷，应用程序的状态信息和行程记录便能查明：究竟是谁发起了叫车请求、行程何时开始、目的地在何处，以及当时适用的保险条款是什么。虽然这些问题通常出现在民事索赔而非联邦刑事诉讼中，但保留相关记录的重要性却是一样的。

案件目前的进展情况

卓文坚（Wenjian Zhuo）关于“持有大麻并意图分销”的定罪依然成立。尽管美国司法部在其新闻稿标题中使用了“走私”一词，但他并未被判犯有共谋罪，也未被判犯有亲自将大麻走私越过加拿大边境的罪行。

行车记录仪的影像并未明确证实其有罪或无罪。它记录了一名司机抵达现场执行某项任务，却被交予了另一项任务的过程；它协助执法部门确认了装载毒品者的身份；它展示了卓文坚在面对意料之外的情况时试图弄清状况的反应；它还记录下了那些被检方用来认定他存在“刻意回避”（conscious avoidance）心态的言行——包括他的疑虑、玩笑以及拒绝行为。

正因如此，这起案件至今仍令人不安。卓文坚在启程时可能完全不知情，却在装有毒品的箱子被搬入其货车后的短短几分钟内，越过了法律红线。陪审团认定他确实构成了犯罪。这短短22分钟充满不确定性的时刻，是否足以支撑重罪定罪、监禁判决以及他在美房产可能被没收的后果？这正是他上诉时必须面对的问题。

致华盛顿州网约车司机与乘客的提示

J.D. Smith 律师事务所不代理联邦刑事辩护案件，也未参与 Zhuo 先生的案件。我们代理华盛顿州的民事案件，涵盖网约车事故、司机受伤以及保险承保范围纠纷等事宜。

如果保险公司对司机是否已登录应用程序、行程是否已经开始，或应适用哪项网约车保险条款存在争议，请致电 206-588-8529 ，商讨相关记录及承保范围事宜。

来源与出版说明

United States v. Zhuo, Decision and Order denying the Rule 29 motion , May 26, 2026.
U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York , February 19, 2026.
Jennifer Gonnerman, “How a Chinese Immigrant Driver Got Entangled in a Drug Bust” , The New Yorker, July 23, 2026.
Jennifer Gonnerman, “A Severe Punishment in a Surreal Drug Case” , The New Yorker, July 29, 2026.
Randall Yip, “Rideshare Driver Gets 27 Months for Drugs Loaded by Passenger” , AsAmNews, July 30, 2026.

Video: The New Yorker, via YouTube

法庭记录将其姓名拼写为 Wenjian Zhuo。一些社交媒体帖子和视频则称其为 Wenzian Zhou

一次突发变故的旅程

Z卓（Zhuo）接下这单生意时31岁，当时住在皇后区。他此前曾为Uber开车，但那时已转为独立接单，主要通过熟人介绍以及“小红书”和微信等华人社交平台寻找客户。他的服务对象包括留学生、游客和私人客户，并已着手开展一项小型旅游业务。

1月22日的那次行程看起来就像是一次普通的私人包车服务。客户同意支付940美元（费用包含油费和过路费），并预付了100美元定金。卓原本以为自己是要去纽约州北部接一名乘客，然后将其送往曼哈顿。在行驶了大约七个小时后，卓抵达了阿克韦萨斯尼莫霍克保留地（Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation）附近的一处加油站。他等候了数小时，直到一名名叫埃里克·蒙图尔（Eric Montour）的男子驾驶一辆白色皮卡车赶到。蒙图尔将他带到附近的一处房产，并往他的货运面包车里装载了十二件物品，其中包括纸箱、行李箱、包袋和一个塑料储物箱。

卓原本以为乘客会是中国人。但蒙图尔并非中国人，两人几乎无法沟通。装货结束后，蒙图尔并没有上车。

卓联系了客户，对方指示他无需搭载乘客，直接将货物运往纽约市。他接受了这一变动并启程离开。在结束通话仅30秒后，他致电一位同行司机寻求建议。

If Your Rideshare Driver Causes an Accident in WA

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:02:11 GMT

What Happens If Your Uber or Lyft Driver Causes the Accident in Washington?

You got in the car expecting a normal ride across town. Instead, your driver rear-ended someone on Aurora, or turned left in front of oncoming traffic on Denny, and now you are hurt and holding a phone with a trip receipt on it.

The question most people ask first is simple: who pays for this? The answer involves three separate things that are easy to blur together. There is the driver, who may have been negligent. There is the insurance policy that applies to the ride. And there is the company, Uber or Lyft, which is not the same thing as the policy that covers its drivers.

This article walks through all three, plus how Washington handles shared fault and what kind of evidence tends to matter.

Common ways a rideshare driver causes an accident

Rideshare driving puts a person behind the wheel in traffic they do not know, on a schedule they are trying to beat, with an app running the whole time. The patterns that show up again and again include:

Distraction from the app. Accepting a new request, checking the next pickup, or following turn-by-turn navigation on a phone mount takes eyes off the road at exactly the wrong moment.
Speeding between rides to raise the number of trips completed in a shift.
Unsafe turns , especially left turns across traffic and turns made late because the driver almost missed the route.
Following too closely in stop-and-go traffic on I-5, SR 99, or downtown arterials.
Fatigue , which is common among drivers working long stretches on nights and weekends.
Unsafe pickups and drop-offs , including stopping in a travel lane, pulling to the curb across a bike lane, or letting a passenger out on the traffic side of the car.

None of these are unique to rideshare. What is different is the volume of driving, the pressure of the app, and the fact that a commercial insurance policy sits behind the driver when the app is running.

Driver fault does not mean an automatic payout

This is the most common misunderstanding, and it is worth being direct about it.

Washington law requires a large liability policy during a prearranged ride. That policy limit is a ceiling, not a check. Proving the driver was careless is the first step, not the last one. A claim still has to establish what injuries the accident caused, what treatment was reasonable, what the medical bills and lost income actually are, and what the harm is worth. An insurer can accept that its driver caused the accident and still dispute the value of the claim, or argue that some of the treatment was unrelated to it.

So the honest framing is this: fault opens the door. What comes through it depends on evidence.

Which policy applies, and when

Washington's rideshare insurance requirements live in RCW 46.72B.180 . The requirements turn on what the driver was actually doing at the moment of the accident.

Before the driver accepts a ride request, while logged in to the app. The required liability coverage is at least $50,000 per person for bodily injury, $100,000 per accident for everyone hurt, and $30,000 for property damage.

During a prearranged ride. The required liability coverage is a $1,000,000 combined single limit for death, personal injury, and property damage.

The timing matters. Under RCW 48.177.005 , a prearranged ride begins the moment the driver accepts the request, continues while the driver transports the passenger, and ends when the passenger leaves the vehicle. That means the $1 million requirement is already in place while the driver is on the way to pick someone up, before anyone is in the back seat.

One more provision is worth knowing. If the policy the driver was supposed to carry does not provide coverage for some reason, including a lapse, the rideshare company has to provide the required coverage starting with the first dollar of the claim.

What a combined single limit actually means

A combined single limit is one pot of money for the whole accident.

A typical personal auto policy splits coverage into separate buckets: so much per injured person, a higher cap for everyone hurt in the accident, and a separate amount for vehicle damage. A combined single limit does not divide it that way. The $1,000,000 covers bodily injury, death, and property damage together, for everyone with a claim arising from that accident.

That has a practical consequence. If one person is seriously injured and nobody else is, the full limit is potentially available to that claim. If seven people are hurt, they are all drawing from the same $1,000,000.

When several people are competing for the same limit

Picture a rideshare vehicle with three passengers that runs a red light and strikes a minivan carrying a family of four. Seven people are hurt. Every one of them has a claim, and every one of them is looking at the same combined single limit.

When the total value of the claims is likely to exceed the available coverage, the dynamics change. Insurers may move to resolve claims early and cheaply before the money runs low, and for someone with serious injuries the timing of a settlement can matter as much as its amount. It is also worth identifying whether any other coverage exists, such as a commercial policy on another vehicle involved.

Who can bring a claim

Liability coverage during a ride is not limited to the person who ordered it. If the rideshare driver caused the accident, the people who may have claims include:

Passengers in the rideshare vehicle
Drivers and passengers in any other vehicle involved
Pedestrians struck in a crosswalk or at a pickup point
Cyclists hit while riding, including in a bike lane during a curbside drop-off
Family members bringing a wrongful death claim

Seattle's density makes the pedestrian and cyclist scenarios more common than people expect. A driver pulling to the curb on a street like Second Avenue or Pike is stopping across space that people on bikes and on foot are using.

Three different claims that get confused

A claim against the driver. This is an ordinary negligence claim. You are saying a specific person drove carelessly and caused your injuries. Everything else follows from that.

A claim handled under the rideshare policy. This is a coverage question, not a fault question about the corporation. The commercial policy exists because state law requires it. A passenger can pursue a claim under that policy without proving that Uber or Lyft did anything wrong as a company.

A direct claim against Uber or Lyft. This is different, and harder. It means arguing the company itself did something legally wrong. That kind of claim depends on separate legal theories, separate evidence, and questions that are fact-specific and not fully settled.

The reason these get tangled is that people see a $1 million rideshare policy and conclude that Uber is "on the hook." Insurance coverage supplied through a rideshare policy is not the same as the company being held directly liable.

Driver status adds another layer. RCW 49.46.300 says a driver is not an employee or agent of a transportation network company for the purposes of certain listed titles of Washington law, but only if specific conditions are satisfied. That is conditional language tied to particular statutory purposes. It is not a blanket declaration that every rideshare driver is an independent contractor for every legal question, and it does not mean a company is immune from every possible claim. It also does not mean company liability is automatic. It means the analysis is more specific than a slogan.

When more than one driver is at fault

Plenty of accidents are not one person's doing. Another motorist may have cut across lanes, run a light, or stopped short without cause.

Washington uses pure comparative fault. Under RCW 4.22.005 , any fault assigned to a person bringing a claim reduces the damages proportionally but does not bar recovery. If a jury assigned 20 percent of the fault to a claimant, the award would be reduced by 20 percent rather than eliminated.

For a passenger, this usually matters less directly. A passenger in the back seat rarely has any share of fault. What matters more is how fault gets divided among the drivers, because that determines which policies pay and in what proportion. When two drivers each contributed, there may be two liability policies in play, and the argument between insurers over percentages can slow everything down.

Evidence that helps establish what happened

Rideshare accidents leave a paper trail that ordinary accidents do not:

App status and trip records. Whether the driver had accepted a ride, and whether a passenger was in the vehicle, determines which coverage applies.
The ride receipt , which typically shows the driver, the vehicle, the route, and the timing.
Photographs of vehicle positions, damage, debris, skid marks, signals, and lane markings.
Witness names and phone numbers , gathered at the scene while people are still there.
The police or collision report , which records the officer's observations. It is useful. It does not settle civil fault.
Dashcam footage , which many rideshare drivers run continuously.
Nearby surveillance video from businesses, parking garages, and transit facilities. This footage is often overwritten within days or weeks, so it has to be requested quickly.

A note on company records: Uber and Lyft are not going to hand a passenger their internal files on request. Under RCW 46.72B.180(11), a rideshare company or its insurer has to cooperate with insurers involved in a claims coverage investigation, including providing log-on and log-off records on request, and must retain data, communications, and documents related to insurance coverage or accident details for at least the applicable limitations period plus two years. That is a real obligation, but it runs to insurers and is limited to coverage and accident information. Getting anything broader generally takes formal legal process.

Where the driver's personal auto policy fits

Many people assume the driver's own car insurance is the first place to look. Often it is not.

Washington law expressly allows personal auto insurers to exclude coverage for losses that happen while a driver is logged in to a rideshare network or providing a prearranged ride. Most personal policies contain that exclusion. So in an accident that happens mid-ride, the personal policy may provide nothing at all, and the commercial rideshare policy is where the claim belongs.

The reverse is also true. If the driver had the app closed and was running errands, the commercial policy does not apply and the personal policy does. This is exactly why app status is one of the first facts worth pinning down.

Practical steps worth taking

The short version: get medical attention and keep your appointments, save your trip receipt and screenshots from the app, write down what you remember while it is fresh, keep track of your costs and missed work, and be careful about recorded statements before you understand the claim.

Common questions

Does Uber's insurance cover me if their driver caused the accident? If you were a passenger on a prearranged ride, a commercial policy meeting Washington's requirements should apply, and state law sets a $1,000,000 combined single limit for that period. Whether and how much that policy pays on your specific claim depends on the evidence and the extent of your injuries.

Can I sue Uber or Lyft directly? Making a claim under the applicable rideshare policy is different from suing the corporation for its own conduct. A direct claim against the company depends on separate theories and evidence, and those questions are fact-specific. It is not automatic, and it is not impossible.

Is the rideshare driver an employee of Uber or Lyft? Washington law addresses that question for specific statutory purposes, and only when certain conditions are met. It is not a single yes-or-no answer that applies across every legal issue.

What if the other driver was mostly at fault instead? Then the other driver's liability coverage becomes the primary source, and the rideshare policy's role depends on how fault is apportioned. Washington's comparative fault rule allows fault to be divided among multiple parties.

I was walking, not riding. Does the rideshare policy matter to me? Yes. If a rideshare driver struck you while on a prearranged ride, the same commercial liability coverage applies to your claim as to a passenger's.

Was the driver on the app? How would I even know? If you were the passenger, your own trip record establishes it. If you were in another vehicle or on foot, it is harder, which is why the police report, witness accounts, and any request for the company's log-on records matter.

Sorting out who is responsible after a Seattle rideshare accident

The insurance structure behind Uber and Lyft is genuinely different from a two-car accident on a residential street, and the difference is not just the size of the policy. It is the number of parties, the way coverage turns on app status, and the gap between what a policy covers and what a company can be held responsible for.

If you were hurt in a rideshare accident in Seattle or elsewhere in Washington, it is worth having someone look at the specific facts. Keep in mind that Washington generally allows three years for a personal injury action under RCW 4.16.080 , though the deadline that applies to any particular claim depends on its details.

Sources

Who Is Responsible When Your Uber Has No Human Driver?

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:22:02 GMT

Robotaxis change the cast of a crash case. When no human rideshare driver is controlling the vehicle, the investigation can shift toward the automated-driving system, fleet operator, vehicle owner, maintenance records, platform and insurers. There is no single national rule assigning every robotaxi crash to one company.

The rideshare app and the autonomous-driving system may belong to different companies

Uber’s partnership with Waymo illustrates the new structure. In Austin and Atlanta, riders can request eligible trips through Uber while Waymo’s autonomous-driving technology operates the vehicle. The companies have described responsibilities that include Uber handling aspects of fleet management and dispatch while Waymo provides the autonomous system.

That is already more complex than the familiar model of a private driver using a personal car on a rideshare app. Other partnerships can divide ownership, software, dispatch and fleet operations differently.

The first question after a crash becomes “What failed?”

In a conventional collision, investigators often begin with human driving conduct: speed, following distance, distraction, impairment, signals and right of way. Those questions still matter when another human-driven vehicle is involved, but a robotaxi introduces additional possibilities.

The evidence may include sensor data, software logs, remote-assistance records, mapping information, vehicle diagnostics, maintenance history and the automated system’s response to the roadway environment. A mechanical defect and an automated-driving decision can also be separate issues.

Several entities can be relevant without all being legally liable

Depending on the facts and jurisdiction, an investigation may examine the automated-driving-system developer, vehicle manufacturer, fleet owner, maintenance provider, dispatch platform, component suppliers and insurers. Identifying a company in that chain does not automatically make it responsible for damages.

The legal theory has to match the alleged failure. Negligent maintenance, defective product design, software defects, operational negligence and another motorist’s ordinary negligence are not interchangeable claims.

Federal crash reporting does not decide civil liability

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires certain manufacturers and operators to report qualifying crashes involving automated driving systems under its Standing General Order. That reporting helps federal safety oversight and defect investigation.

A federal report, however, is not a civil verdict. NHTSA’s safety authority and a state tort case answer different questions. Civil liability can still depend on state negligence law, product-liability standards, insurance contracts and the specific evidence from the crash.

Insurance remains part of the liability map

Autonomous operation does not make insurance disappear. Vehicle owners and fleet operators still operate within state insurance systems, and commercial arrangements can allocate responsibility among companies. The applicable policy can depend on where the crash occurred, who owned the vehicle and how the service was structured.

That makes early preservation of evidence especially important. A passenger may know only that the ride appeared in the Uber app, while the vehicle, autonomous system and fleet operations involve other companies.

No human driver does not mean no accountable actor

The cleanest way to think about a robotaxi crash is not “Who is the driver?” but “Which person, company, system or product allegedly failed, and what evidence shows that failure caused the crash?” In some cases, the answer may still be another human motorist. In others, the autonomous system or fleet operation may be central.

As ride-hailing platforms become distribution networks for autonomous fleets, accident cases will increasingly require a map of the technology and business relationships behind the trip. The app on the passenger’s phone is only the visible front end.

Sources

10 Major Rideshare Verdicts & Settlements

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:40:04 GMT

Ten major Uber and Lyft cases, from jury verdicts to confidential settlements, show how rideshare injury claims and insurance disputes actually play out.

Uber and Lyft carry millions of riders every day, and most trips end without incident. When something does go wrong, though, figuring out who is responsible can get complicated in a hurry. Is the driver liable, or the company? Does a personal auto policy apply, or the platform's commercial coverage? Courts and arbitrators have been answering those questions case by case for over a decade, and the results vary widely depending on where the accident happened and what the driver was doing when it occurred.

The ten cases below were chosen because they produced significant outcomes, involved unusual circumstances, or marked a real shift in how rideshare litigation gets handled. They are not ranked strictly by size. Some of the outcomes below are jury verdicts, one is an arbitration award, and a few are confidential settlements where the dollar amount was never made public. A jury verdict also is not the same as money collected; verdicts can be reduced, appealed, or settled afterward. Treat the list as a picture of the range of rideshare litigation, not a scoreboard.

None of these cases arose in Washington, and none of them control how a Washington claim would be valued. They're useful mainly for what they show about the kinds of disputes rideshare accidents can generate, from passenger injuries and pedestrian strikes to insurance fights and questions about a platform's responsibility for its drivers.

1. Brandon Crawley: $19 Million Verdict Over a Career-Ending Uber Crash

On Christmas Day 2018, Brandon Crawley, a fourth-round NHL draft pick by the New York Rangers, was riding as a passenger in an Uber in Glen Rock, New Jersey. The vehicle left the road and struck a utility pole. Crawley suffered a traumatic brain injury, post-concussion syndrome, and lasting vision problems that ended his professional hockey career after five seasons in the American Hockey League.

Crawley sued Uber and the driver in October 2020, arguing that Uber should be held responsible for the driver's negligence. The case turned largely on whether Uber drivers should be treated as employees or independent contractors under New Jersey law, a classification Uber has fought for years. On January 28, 2026, a Bergen County jury sided with Crawley, awarding $15 million for lost future earnings, $3 million for past lost wages, and $1 million for pain and suffering, for a total of $19 million.

Uber's attorneys called the driver an independent contractor and said in a statement that the verdict wasn't legal precedent. As of this writing, post-trial motions and a possible appeal remain pending, so the case is not fully resolved and how much of the verdict Crawley ultimately collects is still an open question. Crawley's attorneys have described it as the largest jury verdict against Uber in the country to date.

2. Jaylynn Dean: $8.5 Million Verdict in the First Federal Uber Sexual Assault Trial

Jaylynn Dean was 19 when she requested an Uber ride home from her boyfriend's apartment in Tempe, Arizona, in November 2023. According to her lawsuit, the driver, Hassan Turay, deviated from the route, entered the back seat where she was lying down, and raped her. The case became the first federal bellwether trial in a massive multidistrict litigation consolidating thousands of sexual assault claims against Uber nationwide. An earlier bellwether trial in a separate California state court proceeding had gone the other way, with jurors finding Uber not liable, which made the outcome in Dean's case closely watched.

In February 2026, a nine-member federal jury in Phoenix found Uber liable under an "apparent agency" theory, reasoning that Turay was acting as Uber's agent when the assault occurred. Jurors awarded Dean $8.5 million in compensatory damages. Notably, the jury rejected Dean's separate claims that Uber was directly negligent in vetting or dispatching the driver and that the app itself was defectively designed, and it declined to award any punitive damages despite Dean's attorneys seeking more than $140 million.

The verdict does not resolve the thousands of other sexual assault claims pending against Uber, but it gave both sides a real data point on how a jury might value one. As of mid-2026, the case remained on appeal.

3. A Cardiologist's $4.67 Million Verdict Against Lyft

In March 2024, a practicing cardiologist was riding in the back seat of a Lyft on Interstate 10 near Montclair, California, when the driver fell asleep at roughly 40 miles per hour and rear-ended another vehicle. He suffered facial fractures, a pelvic fracture, permanent loss of smell and taste, and ultimately needed a total hip replacement along with two other surgeries.

The defense's highest pretrial settlement offer was $2 million. The plaintiff turned it down and took the case to trial, arguing driver fatigue amounted to gross negligence. In May 2026, a San Bernardino County jury returned a verdict of $4,667,549.13, more than double what had been offered before trial. The case is a reminder that pretrial settlement offers, even from a company with deep pockets, don't always reflect what a jury will ultimately award once it hears the full extent of someone's injuries.

4. Wyatt Zmrzel: $6 Million Verdict Over a Newly Approved Lyft Driver

Twenty-two-year-old Wyatt Zmrzel requested a Lyft home from a Sacramento tattoo shop in December 2017. The driver, Rafiullah Amiri, had been approved to drive for Lyft only the day before and had received no training on the safe operation of a vehicle. Instead of taking the most direct route, Amiri drove more than 20 miles in the wrong direction, stopped in the median of Highway 99, and then accelerated into oncoming traffic, where his vehicle was struck by another car traveling at highway speed. Zmrzel died roughly half an hour later.

Zmrzel's family sued Lyft for negligent hiring, training, and supervision, arguing the company put an unprepared driver on the road within a day of approving him. In December 2021, a Sacramento County jury returned a $6 million wrongful death verdict. The case is often cited in discussions about how quickly rideshare companies onboard new drivers and what, if any, training they receive before picking up their first passenger.

5. Craig Koenekoop: $6.7 Million Verdict After Being Struck En Route to a Pickup

In December 2018, Craig Koenekoop, then a 30-year-old freelance writer, was out for a run in Los Angeles when an Uber driver named James Thompson, logged into the app and on his way to pick up two passengers, made a right turn and struck him. Koenekoop suffered a clavicle fracture and a closed head injury. Over the following years he developed hip and back problems that he attributed to the collision, including bilateral labral tears that eventually required two rounds of hip surgery. Uber's defense argued much of that later treatment stemmed from a preexisting hip condition unrelated to the crash.

Ahead of trial, Uber stipulated to vicarious liability for this case specifically, without conceding any broader classification of its drivers as employees, and Thompson stipulated that he alone was negligent in causing the collision, in exchange for being dismissed from the case. That left Uber as the sole defendant at trial. In April 2024, a Los Angeles County jury awarded $6,768,071.46, commonly reported as roughly $6.7 million, covering both medical costs and pain and suffering. It was described at the time as the first case Uber had allowed to reach a jury verdict in Southern California rather than settling.

6. A Broward Teen's $7 Million Uninsured Motorist Verdict Tied to an Uber Ride

A 15-year-old boy was riding as a passenger in a rental vehicle connected to Uber's driver program when an uninsured, intoxicated driver ran a red light and T-boned the car in Broward County, Florida. The teen, who was unrestrained at the time, was ejected from the vehicle and suffered a traumatic brain injury, memory loss, and orthopedic injuries.

Because the at-fault driver had no insurance, the claim proceeded against Uber's uninsured motorist carrier, Southern-Owners Insurance, which had declined to pay policy limits before the case went to court. A Broward County jury ultimately awarded $7 million on the uninsured motorist claim. It's worth being clear about what this verdict actually decided: it wasn't a jury finding Uber itself negligent for the crash. It was a jury deciding what the teen's claim was worth under Uber's own UM coverage after the insurer wouldn't pay it voluntarily, which is its own kind of dispute rideshare passengers can run into.

7. Olivia Oney: $3.5 Million Verdict Against Uber's Insurer

Olivia Oney, a competitive equestrian, was a restrained back-seat passenger in an Uber in Miami when the driver rear-ended another vehicle. She fractured her pelvis in five places and underwent an L5-S1 spinal fusion, followed by a second surgery months later to remove some of the hardware. She still has permanent hardware in her spine.

The lawsuit was filed against Progressive Express, which provided Uber's underinsured motorist coverage, rather than against Uber directly. Progressive didn't dispute that Oney was injured, but argued her recovery was more complete than she claimed, pointing to social media videos of her competing on horseback again about five months after the crash. A Miami-Dade jury wasn't persuaded and awarded $3.5 million in 2023. As with the Broward case above, this was an insurance company defending a UM/UIM claim, not a verdict against Uber for the driver's conduct.

8. Lisa Irving: $1.1 Million Arbitration Award Over Guide Dog Discrimination

Lisa Irving is legally blind and relies on a guide dog named Bernie to get around San Francisco. Between 2016 and 2018, she says Uber drivers denied her rides, verbally abused her, or abandoned her in unsafe locations at least 14 separate times because of the dog, including one incident where a driver yelled at her to get out of his car more than a dozen times before leaving her stranded.

Irving brought a discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act and California's Unruh Civil Rights Act. Uber argued it wasn't responsible because its drivers are independent contractors, an argument the arbitrator rejected. In March 2021, arbitrator Rudy Gerber awarded Irving roughly $1.1 million, consisting of $324,000 in damages and about $805,000 in attorney fees and costs, an amount her attorneys described as among the largest ever issued to a single blind claimant in an ADA case. A California court confirmed the award the following month. It's a different kind of case than the crash and assault claims on this list, but it speaks to the same underlying question: how much responsibility a platform bears for how its drivers actually treat passengers.

9. Sofia Liu: Confidential Settlement After a Fatal Pedestrian Accident

On New Year's Eve 2013, six-year-old Sofia Liu was crossing a San Francisco crosswalk with her mother and younger brother when they were struck by a driver logged into the Uber app but not yet carrying a passenger. Sofia died from her injuries; her mother suffered a serious head injury and other trauma, and her brother was also hurt.

Uber initially argued it bore no responsibility because the driver wasn't on an active trip, only logged in and waiting for a ride request. That position became one of the first major tests of how rideshare insurance should work during the gap between a driver going online and accepting a passenger. The Liu family's lawsuit, and the public attention it drew, helped push California to pass legislation requiring rideshare companies to carry contingent liability coverage during that waiting period, a framework other states, including Washington, later adopted in some form. The case settled confidentially in July 2015, at the family's request, and the amount was never disclosed.

10. Elaine Herzberg: Confidential Settlement After the First Fatal Self-Driving Crash

In March 2018, an Uber self-driving test vehicle, a modified Volvo XC90 SUV with a human safety driver behind the wheel, struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she walked her bicycle across a street in Tempe, Arizona, outside a marked crosswalk. Federal investigators later found the vehicle's software failed to correctly identify her as a pedestrian in time to brake, while the safety driver had been looking down at a phone rather than watching the road.

It was the first known pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving test vehicle, and it drew national attention to how autonomous vehicle testing was being regulated, or wasn't. Uber settled with Herzberg's family within about two weeks of the crash, a fast resolution that let the company avoid a drawn-out trial focused on its testing program. The settlement terms were never made public. Separately, the safety driver was later charged criminally and pleaded guilty to a lesser offense, but that case was distinct from the civil settlement with Herzberg's family.

What Washington Riders Can Learn From These Outcomes

Taken together, these cases cover a lot of ground: passenger injuries, pedestrian strikes, a wrongful death, a sexual assault, a disability discrimination claim, and insurance disputes where the fight was with an insurer rather than the rideshare company itself. A few even turned on the same underlying legal question, whether a driver is really an independent contractor or is close enough to an employee that the platform should answer for what happens on a ride.

None of these verdicts or settlements sets binding precedent in Washington, and none of them predict what a Washington claim is worth. Washington has its own rules for how fault gets divided, how wrongful death claims work, and what rideshare companies are required to carry in insurance during different phases of a ride. What these cases are useful for is illustrating the range of situations that can turn into a real legal dispute, and how differently they can be resolved depending on the facts, the venue, and who ends up as the named defendant.

If you were hurt in an Uber or Lyft accident in Washington, the specifics of your case, not a headline number from another state, will determine what it's worth.

Talk to the Law Office of J.D. Smith

If you or someone you love was seriously hurt in an Uber or Lyft accident in Washington, we can help you sort out who's responsible and what insurance coverage applies. Rideshare claims often involve more than one policy, and getting that wrong can cost you. Contact the Law Office of J.D. Smith for a free consultation. Call us today at (206) 588-8529.

Sources and Further Reading

North Jersey / The Record and Yahoo News/Finance coverage of Crawley v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (Bergen County Superior Court, Feb. 2026)
ABA Journal, CNN, and Courthouse News Service coverage of Dean v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (D. Ariz., MDL No. 3084, Feb. 2026)
Morgan & Morgan press release on the San Bernardino County Lyft driver-fatigue verdict (May 2026)
Case summary of Zmrzel v. Lyft, Inc. (Sacramento County Superior Court, Dec. 2021), Penney & Associates
Jury Verdict Alert case report, Koenekoop v. Uber Technologies, Inc. (Los Angeles County Superior Court, Case No. 20STCV18978, April 2024)
Florida jury verdict reporting on the Southern-Owners Insurance UIM claim connected to an Uber ride (17th Judicial Circuit, Broward County, 2024)
Haggard Law Firm case summary, Oney v. Progressive Express Insurance Co. (Miami-Dade County, 2023)
Courthouse News Service and CNN coverage of the Irving v. Uber Technologies, Inc. arbitration confirmation (San Francisco Superior Court, April 2021)
San Francisco Examiner and Dolan Law Firm coverage of the Liu v. Uber Technologies, Inc. settlement (San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-14-536979, 2015)
NPR and The Drive coverage of the Uber/Herzberg settlement (Maricopa County, Arizona, 2018

5 Things to Never Say to a Washington Adjuster

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:00:25 GMT

5 Things to Never Say to a Washington Insurance Adjuster

After a rideshare accident, it is common to hear from an insurance adjuster within a few days, sometimes sooner. That is different from a typical two-car accident, where one liability insurer usually handles the claim from start to finish. If you were hurt in an Uber or Lyft accident in Washington, you may end up dealing with the other driver's insurer, Uber's or Lyft's insurer or claims administrator, and potentially your own auto insurer, sometimes all within the same week.

An adjuster's job includes gathering information and evaluating what the accident may cost their company. That does not make every adjuster dishonest, and it does not mean you should refuse to talk to anyone. But what you say early on, often before you know the full extent of your injuries or have a clear picture of how the accident happened, can shape how your claim gets evaluated later. What you are actually required to share, and how much detail makes sense to give, depends on which insurer is calling and what your relationship is to that policy.

Below are five statements that tend to create problems in a rideshare insurance claim, why they cause issues, and what you can accurately say instead.

1. "I'm Fine" or "I'm Okay"

Right after an accident, most people say they are fine, even when they are not. That is a normal reaction, not carelessness. Adrenaline can mask pain for hours, and some injuries, particularly soft tissue injuries and concussions, do not produce clear symptoms right away.

The complication tends to show up later. If an adjuster's file notes that you said you were fine at the scene, and you are later diagnosed with a soft tissue injury or a concussion, the adjuster may point to that gap between your first statement and your medical records. That does not mean an early "I'm fine" automatically ends a claim. Washington's pure comparative fault rule, RCW 4.22.005, does not turn a polite response into an admission of anything. But an inconsistency between what you said at the scene and what your treatment shows afterward is the kind of detail an adjuster may raise when deciding what your claim is worth.

What you can say instead

If someone asks how you are doing at the scene, it is fine to say you are not sure yet, if that is true. Something like, "I don't know yet, I want to get checked out," is honest and does not lock you into a position before you have any medical information.

Practical action: See a doctor soon after the accident, even if you feel okay in the moment, and describe your symptoms accurately at every visit, including ones that develop later.

2. "I'm Sorry"

Saying "I'm sorry" after any accident is often just a reflex, regardless of who caused it. It is a social habit, not a legal statement.

An apology by itself is not a legal admission of fault in Washington. But vague or apologetic language can raise questions later, especially if an adjuster reviews a recorded statement or a police report and it is unclear whether you were apologizing for causing the accident or simply reacting to a stressful situation. Comments like this sometimes get cited during a fault dispute, occasionally out of context.

The safer approach is not to avoid basic courtesy, but to avoid narrating your own theory of who caused the accident before you actually know. Exchange the information you are required to exchange: names, contact information, insurance details. Leave the question of fault to the investigation, where evidence such as photos, witness accounts, and vehicle or app data can speak for itself.

What you can say instead

Stick to logistics. "Let's exchange insurance information" is enough. You do not need to explain, defend, or apologize for what happened, and you do not need to accuse the other driver either.

Practical action: If you check on the other people involved, do it without describing how the accident happened or who you think was at fault.

3. Guessing Speed, Distance, or Timing

If someone asks how fast the other car was going, it is natural to want to answer. But a rough guess made moments after a stressful accident is rarely accurate, and it can cause problems if other evidence later tells a different story.

This does not mean every rideshare accident has black box or event data recorder evidence available to check your guess against, because it usually does not work that way. More often, the useful evidence comes from dashcam footage, a passenger's phone, nearby security cameras, GPS and trip data from the Uber or Lyft app, or an accident reconstruction if the claim is serious enough to warrant one. If your early estimate does not match what that evidence eventually shows, it becomes a detail an adjuster may point to when questioning your reliability as a witness, even on points that have nothing to do with speed.

What you can say instead

Describe what you observed rather than offering a specific number. "The other car was moving quickly" or "I didn't see it coming" are honest observations. If you genuinely do not know, "I'm not sure of the exact speed" is a complete and accurate answer.

Practical action: Take photos of the vehicles, the road, and any visible damage as soon as it is safe to do so. Photos hold up better than memory.

4. Agreeing to a Recorded Statement Without Knowing Who's Asking

A rideshare accident can involve more than one adjuster asking for a recorded statement: the other driver's insurer, Uber's or Lyft's insurer or third-party claims administrator, and potentially your own auto insurer if you carry applicable coverage. These are not the same relationship, and what is reasonably expected of you is not the same in each case.

Generally, you do not have a contractual duty to give a recorded statement to the other driver's liability insurer, or to Uber's or Lyft's insurer, if you are not their policyholder. Your own insurance policy may include a duty to cooperate with your insurer's investigation, which can include providing a statement. Even then, it is reasonable to understand what is actually being asked before you agree, and to speak with an attorney first if your injuries or the disputed facts are significant.

What you can say instead

Ask who is calling and which policy they represent before agreeing to anything. "I want to confirm who I'm speaking with and what this is about before I decide whether to give a statement" is a reasonable, complete answer. You are not required to decide on the spot.

Practical action: Write down the caller's name, company, and phone number, and note whether they represent the other driver, the rideshare company, or your own insurer.

5. Accepting a Settlement Offer Without Reviewing It First

An early settlement offer is not necessarily made in bad faith, but it is often made before your medical treatment, future care needs, lost wages, or the full available insurance coverage are fully understood. Accepting an offer while you are still receiving treatment means the offer was calculated on incomplete information, information that may not reflect what your claim eventually turns out to be worth.

Once you sign a settlement release, that claim is generally considered resolved, and you typically cannot go back and ask for more later, even if your treatment continues or your condition changes. Because of that, what a release actually covers, and what claims it closes out, is worth reviewing carefully before you sign anything.

What you can say instead

You are allowed to take your time. "I want to review this before I respond" is a complete answer, and no legitimate insurer should pressure you to sign on the spot.

Practical action: Before accepting any settlement offer or signing a release, have an attorney review what it covers and whether your treatment and evaluation are far enough along to know what the claim is actually worth.

What to Do When an Insurance Adjuster Calls After a Rideshare Accident

If an adjuster reaches you after an Uber or Lyft accident, a few habits can help protect your claim without requiring you to guess at legal rules in the moment:

Get the caller's name, company, direct phone number, and claim number
Determine which driver or policy the adjuster represents before discussing the accident
Ask whether the call is for basic identifying information, a recorded statement, a medical authorization, or a settlement offer
Keep your answers accurate and limited to what you actually know or observed
Avoid guessing about injuries, speed, distance, or fault
Save photographs, rideshare trip receipts, app screenshots, messages, witness contact information, and medical records
Ask for significant requests or offers in writing rather than responding immediately over the phone
Talk with an attorney before signing a broad medical authorization or a settlement release, especially if your injuries or the available coverage are unclear

None of this requires refusing to cooperate with legitimate requests. It just means knowing what is actually being asked before you answer it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to speak with Uber's or Lyft's insurance adjuster?

Generally, no, not in the sense of giving a detailed recorded statement, if you are not their policyholder. You can confirm who is calling and what they are requesting before deciding how to respond, and it is reasonable to speak with an attorney first if the accident involved significant injuries.

Should I give my own insurance company a recorded statement?

Your own auto policy may include a duty to cooperate with your insurer's investigation, which can include a recorded statement. That duty is different from what you owe the other driver's insurer or Uber's or Lyft's insurer. If your claim is disputed or your injuries are serious, it is reasonable to understand exactly what is being asked, and to have an attorney review your policy, before giving a statement.

Can I change or reopen a claim after signing a settlement release?

Usually not. Signing a release typically ends the claim it covers, even if your treatment continues afterward or your condition changes. There can be limited exceptions depending on the specific facts and the release's language, but the safest approach is to have the release reviewed before you sign it, not after.

If You're Not Sure What to Say

A rideshare accident often means dealing with more than one insurer at the same time, each with a different relationship to your claim. Speaking with a Washington rideshare attorney before you give a recorded statement or sign a release can help you understand which insurer is calling, what you are actually required to provide, and whether your claim has been fully evaluated before you agree to anything.

If you were hurt in an Uber or Lyft accident in Washington and are not sure how to respond to an adjuster, call (206) 588-8529 to talk with someone at our office about your situation.

Top 8 Most Dangerous Intersections in the Puget Sound

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 03:22:38 GMT

Top 8 Most Dangerous Intersections in the Puget Sound

Across the Puget Sound, some intersections stand out again and again in crash data, city safety studies, and transportation planning. These are not random trouble spots. They are places where heavy traffic, turning movements, freight, transit, pedestrian crossings, and road design all combine to create repeated conflict.

Here is a closer look at eight intersections that continue to show up in the conversation about road safety in the region.

1) SR 204 and SR 9 in Lake Stevens

This one belongs on any serious list. A 2026 study that says it analyzed Washington State Patrol collision data from 2021 through 2024 called the SR 204 and SR 9 roundabout the most crash-prone intersection in Washington, with 272 crashes over that span. WSDOT also treated this as a major problem area, eventually rebuilding it with four roundabouts and widening work in a $69 million project that finished in 2025.

What makes it bad is not hard to picture. It carries regional traffic, freight, shopping traffic, and a lot of local turning movements all in one place. Even after a redesign meant to improve flow and safety, it is still the kind of intersection people in Snohomish County talk about by name.

2) Evergreen Way and Airport Road in Everett

This Everett intersection is more than just busy. It has also stood out for the seriousness of the crashes there. The same 2026 Washington intersection study found that Highway 99/Evergreen Way and Airport Road had the highest severity rating among the intersections it identified, with three fatalities and five serious injuries over four years. That tracks with concerns the city of Everett has raised itself. In 2022, the city reported that the stretch of Evergreen Way between Airport Road and Everett Mall Way had the highest injury crash rate and the highest pedestrian injury crash rate of any arterial segment in Everett.

That matters because this is not some isolated corner. It sits on a fast, commercial stretch where drivers, turning traffic, transit riders, and pedestrians all collide with a street design that long favored speed over comfort.

3) Aurora Avenue North and North 105th Street in Seattle

Aurora has a reputation, and the data backs up why. INRIX reported that the most crashes by total count in its Seattle intersection analysis happened near Aurora Ave N and N 105th St . Separately, SDOT has been blunt that Aurora has a history of safety challenges , and the city has rolled out pedestrian-first signals, crosswalk work, sidewalk upgrades, and planned no-turn-on-red restrictions along the corridor.

In plain English, this is the kind of place where a lot is happening at once and the street still asks too much of everybody. Drivers are moving fast, crossings are long, and small mistakes stop being small pretty quickly.

4) Rainier Avenue South and South Henderson Street in Seattle

Rainier and Henderson is exactly the kind of South Seattle intersection that ends up on safety planners’ radar for good reason. SDOT says S Henderson Street had 71 police-reported crashes from 2018 to 2022 , including five serious injuries . The city specifically added no-turn-on-red signs at Rainier Ave S and S Henderson St as part of its school-safety work in the area. Rainier from S Kenny St to S Henderson St is also part of Seattle’s ongoing Phase 2 safety work on the corridor.

This one matters because it is not just about drivers. The intersection serves schools, buses, apartments, businesses, and daily foot traffic. When a place is used that heavily, weak design choices show up fast.

5) East John Street and East Madison Street in Seattle

Not every dangerous intersection looks like a freeway ramp. Some are messy because the geometry is awkward and the conflict points pile up. INRIX said E John Street and E Madison Street had the highest crash rate per 100,000 vehicles in its Seattle analysis. SDOT has also been making safety upgrades in that same E John / E Madison / 24th Ave E area through the Madison corridor work, including a new crossw alk, a raised crosswalk, a curb bulb, and wider sidewalk space for safer crossings.

That is usually a sign agencies already know an intersection asks people to make too many judgment calls in too little space. And that is often where crashes happen.

6) Bellevue Way NE and NE 8th Street in Bellevue

Bellevue Way and NE 8th is one of the clearest examples of an intersection making a safety list because a city has already studied it in depth. Bellevue used this intersection for a pedestrian-detection pilot, and its before-and-after crosswalk study says the location was chosen because it has high vehicle and pedestrian volumes . The city then found that after installing high-visibility crosswalks, the vehicle-pedestrian conflict rate dropped 56% .

That is a pretty strong clue that this was not a random spot. Bellevue’s broader Vision Zero work also says most fatal and serious injury crashes happen on a relatively small High Injury Network, and NE 8th has been one of the corridors studied through that program.

7) South Pine Street and Center Street in Tacoma

Tacoma’s own Road Safety Audit for South Pine put this intersection in unusually direct language: it called S Pine St and Center St the intersection of two high-risk Vision Zero corridors . Tacoma has also kept Pine Street between Center Street and South 47th Street in active planning for pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements.

That tells you this is not just a place locals complain about. It is a place the city itself has already tagged as part of a bigger pattern of serious risk.

8) South Tacoma Way and South 56th Street in Tacoma

South Tacoma Way and South 56th is another one that keeps surfacing in Tacoma planning and safety work. City planning documents say Tacoma began using video analytics at this intersection to record traffic movements, including near misses , so staff could redesign the area more intelligently. The city’s South Tacoma plan also specifically prioritizes Road Safety Audit work in the South Tacoma Way business district / South 56th Street area. On top of that, Tacoma still has a red-light camera at S 56th Street and S Tacoma Way .

You do not usually bring out near-miss analytics, corridor redesign talk, and automated enforcement at the same spot unless there is a real problem to solve.

Why These Intersections Keep Showing Up

There is a pattern here. These are not sleepy residential four-ways. They are places where fast arterials meet heavy turning traffic, transit, retail driveways, schools, freight, or long pedestrian crossings. That does not excuse bad driving. It just means the road itself leaves less room for mistakes.

And that is the real story across the Puget Sound. A lot of the worst intersections are not bad because one driver did something dumb on one day. They are bad because the design, speed, and volume create the same conflicts over and over again.

Seattle Uber Accident in Tunnel: What Actually Happened in the SR 99 Tunnel

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 20:05:49 GMT

Rideshare passengers were seen getting out of Uber and other rided Seattle’s SR 99 tunnel. The vehicle involved in the accident was a Toyota Prius, but authorities did not identify it as an Uber.

On June 19, 2026, a Toyota Prius rolled over inside the northbound State Route 99 tunnel in downtown Seattle, shutting down all northbound lanes during the morning rush.

The accident occurred around 9:30 a.m. near the south end of the tunnel. Seattle police and an ambulance responded, traffic began moving through one lane by approximately 10 a.m., and the scene was cleared by 10:30.

That alone would have been a relatively short-lived traffic story.

What made it a rideshare story was what happened behind the accident.

FOX 13 Seattle reported that people trapped in the backup were getting out of Ubers and other rideshare vehicles and walking around the SR 99 tunnel in an effort to reach the noon USA–Australia World Cup match at Seattle Stadium.

There is no reliable reporting that the Prius that rolled over was an Uber or Lyft. Seattle police identified it only as a Prius. There is also no reporting establishing whether rideshare drivers told passengers to get out, passengers asked to leave, or passengers simply decided they would reach the stadium faster on foot.

Those distinctions matter.

But the sight of rideshare passengers exiting vehicles inside or around a highway tunnel points to a separate legal issue that has already produced serious litigation elsewhere in the country:

Where can an Uber or Lyft driver safely end a ride?

A Highway Tunnel Is Not a Normal Drop-O ff Point

Washington law specifically addresses stopping inside highway tunnels.

RCW 46.61.570 generally prohibits a driver from stopping, standing or parking a vehicle “within a highway tunnel.” The statute recognizes exceptions when stopping is necessary to avoid a traffic conflict or when a driver is complying with the law, police instructions or a traffic-control device.

That distinction is critical here.

Traffic in the SR 99 tunnel was stopped because of an accident. The fact that rideshare vehicles were sitting inside the tunnel does not establish that their drivers illegally stopped there to discharge passengers.

It does establish something much simpler: a highway tunnel is not an ordinary passenger-loading zone.

And when a driver actually chooses where to end a ride, courts have treated that choice as part of the driver's responsibility.

A Rideshare Driver's Responsibility Does Not Necessarily End With the Brake Pedal

One of the clearest cases involving a rideshare drop-off is Mason v. Uber Technologies, Inc., decided by a California Court of Appeal in 2022.

An Uber driver transported four passengers to the Donatello Hotel in San Francisco. Rather than pulling into the hotel's driveway, the driver stopped along Mason Street. One passenger sitting on the driver's side opened her rear door as a garbage truck passed. The door struck a worker riding on the truck, knocking him to the ground and causing serious injuries that required surgery.

The injured worker sued both the driver and Uber.

A trial court initially granted summary judgment for the defendants. The appellate court reversed.

The court held that the Uber driver owed a general duty to exercise reasonable care while offloading his passengers . Evidence showed that the hotel had a driveway completely separated from the traffic lanes and that the driver acknowledged it would have been a safer place to unload passengers if available.

The court also focused on what the driver did after choosing to stop beside traffic. He did not check his mirrors before the passenger opened the street-side door and did not instruct or warn her about exiting into the roadway. The passenger testified that she would have followed such a warning. The appellate court concluded that a jury should decide whether the driver's choice of location and failure to warn were reasonable.

The decision was unpublished and therefore is not citable as California precedent except in limited circumstances. It also did not establish that every rideshare company is automatically liable for every unsafe drop-off.

But the court's analysis is directly relevant to the underlying issue: selecting a place to discharge a passenger is not legally meaningless simply because the vehicle has stopped.

A 19-Year-Old Uber Rider Was Left Near a California Freeway. She Was Later Killed on the Freeway.

A much more serious case arose after the 2018 death of Stella Grace Yeh, a 19-year-old University of San Diego student.

Court records state that Yeh was highly intoxicated when a friend requested an Uber to take her back to her dorm. During the trip, she vomited inside the vehicle.

The parties disputed precisely how the ride ended. Yeh's family alleged that the Uber driver exited Interstate 5 and ordered her out. The driver told police that Yeh canceled the ride and asked to be dropped off after declining his offer to return her to her original pickup location.

The location was described in the family's complaint as an area without nearby homes or businesses and with insufficient pedestrian lighting. Yeh subsequently requested another Uber. The second driver located her, but she did not enter his vehicle and instead moved toward a freeway off-ramp.

Approximately half an hour later, Yeh walked onto Interstate 805 and was struck by two vehicles. She died at the scene. A toxicology report put her blood-alcohol concentration at 0.21 percent.

Her family sued Uber and the drivers.

The litigation is also a warning against oversimplifying these cases. In May 2026, a California Court of Appeal affirmed a defense judgment for Uber in McGarry v. Uber Technologies . The opinion was unpublished. The case demonstrates that an allegation of unsafe discharge, even followed by a horrific injury, does not automatically establish proximate causation or corporate liability. Those elements still have to be proved.

That does not make the location of a drop-off irrelevant. It means the facts between the drop-off and the injury matter.

A Lyft Passenger Was Killed Immediately After Being Ordered Out on a Delaware Highway

The facts surrounding the 2022 death of Sidney Wolf were more direct.

According to Delaware State Police and subsequent court filings reported by local news organizations, Wolf and five other passengers were traveling in a Lyft near Dewey Beach, Delaware, when a dispute occurred between the group and the driver.

Police reported that the Lyft stopped in the southbound lanes of Coastal Highway and that the passengers were ordered out. Wolf exited from the right rear passenger side and was standing in the active roadway when another vehicle struck and killed him.

Wolf's wife and children later filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Lyft and the driver. The complaint alleged, among other things, that the ride was terminated at an unsafe location.

The driver, Laquise Leon, was separately indicted in 2024 on charges that included criminally negligent homicide and stopping a vehicle on a public roadway and obstructing traffic. An indictment is an accusation, not a criminal conviction.

The Wolf case is especially relevant to the basic drop-off issue because the alleged harm was not several blocks or several hours removed from the ride. The passenger was struck after exiting the rideshare vehicle into an active highway.

Washington Rideshare Insurance Also Makes the Moment a Passenger Exits Significant

Washington's rideshare insurance statute draws an explicit line around the passenger's time inside a transportation network company vehicle.

RCW 46.72B.180 requires $1 million in combined single-limit liability coverage during a prearranged ride. It separately requires at least $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident in underinsured-motorist coverage from the moment a passenger enters the TNC vehicle until the passenger exits it.

That does not mean every claim disappears the second someone's foot touches the pavement.

It means the timing and circumstances of a passenger's exit can affect the insurance analysis. An injury caused by an allegedly negligent decision to discharge someone in a dangerous location may involve different liability and coverage questions than an accident that occurs while the passenger remains seated inside the vehicle.

The trip record can become critical.

Washington requires transportation network companies to preserve individual trip records for at least three years from the end of the calendar year in which the trip occurred. The state's insurance provisions also require preservation of accident-related coverage information and electronic records showing when a driver logged on and off the platform.

What Would Matter After an Unsafe Uber or Lyft Drop-Off in Seattle?

A rideshare passenger being injured after leaving a vehicle does not answer the liability question by itself.

The evidence does.

Investigators would want to know:

Who decided the passenger should exit? There is a major factual difference between a driver ordering someone out and a passenger independently insisting on leaving.
Where did the driver stop? A curb, designated loading zone, freeway shoulder, active traffic lane and highway tunnel present very different risks.
Was a safer location reasonably available? That issue was central in Mason, where evidence showed the driver could have used a hotel driveway away from traffic.
What condition was the passenger in? Intoxication, disability, confusion, age or another visibly impaired condition may affect what risks were reasonably foreseeable.
What do the app and vehicle records show? GPS data, the trip-ending location, timestamps, driver messages, dashcam video, traffic cameras and witness statements can establish facts that neither side can reliably reconstruct later.

The app showing a ride as “completed” is not a substitute for analyzing what actually happened.

What We Know About the Seattle SR 99 Incident

There is currently no factual basis to say that an Uber caused the June 19 rollover inside Seattle's SR 99 tunnel.

There is also no factual basis to accuse the rideshare drivers caught behind the wreck of ordering their passengers into an unsafe area.

What is documented is that a Prius rolled over, the northbound tunnel was blocked, and FOX 13 observed people getting out of Uber and other rideshare vehicles and walking around the tunnel toward the World Cup match.

That makes the incident a useful reminder of a legal issue that receives far less attention than rideshare collisions themselves.

An Uber or Lyft driver's decisions about where and how a passenger gets out of the vehicle can matter just as much as how the driver operated the vehicle getting there.

When a ride ends in live traffic, on a highway, beside an unsafe roadway or somewhere else that exposes a passenger to an obvious danger, the legal analysis does not necessarily end because the trip did.

2 Uber Assault Trials, 2 Different Awards: $8.5M vs. $5000

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:49:38 GMT

Two Uber Sexual Assault Trials, Two Very Different Awards: $8.5 Million vs. $5,000

Thousands of sexual-assault lawsuits against Uber have been moving through federal court together. In early 2026, two of those cases reached juries.

Both resulted in findings against Uber.

One ended with an $8.5 million award .

The other ended with $5,000 .

That enormous difference is more useful than either verdict standing alone. It shows why the growing litigation over assaults by rideshare drivers cannot be reduced to a simple question of whether Uber “wins” or “loses.”

Even when jurors agree that the company can be held legally responsible for a driver’s conduct, the facts surrounding the assault, the legal theory being presented and the evidence of resulting harm can dramatically change the outcome.

It also helps explain why these particular trials were being watched far beyond the individual plaintiffs involved.

Why Were These Two Uber Cases Being Tried Separately?

In 2023, the federal judiciary centralized a growing number of lawsuits accusing Uber of failing to adequately address sexual assault by drivers.

The U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation concluded that the cases shared substantial factual questions, including what Uber knew about sexual assaults involving drivers, the adequacy of its background checks and what safety measures the company had implemented.

The cases were consolidated for coordinated proceedings before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in the Northern District of California. The panel’s original transfer order is available in In re Uber Technologies, Inc., Passenger Sexual Assault Litigation, MDL No. 3084, Transfer Order .

Consolidation did not transform thousands of individual allegations into one giant lawsuit.

Individual passengers still had different drivers, different encounters, different injuries and, in many cases, different state laws governing their claims.

By April 2026, Reuters reported that Uber was facing more than 3,300 similar cases in the consolidated federal litigation , according to Uber loses another US driver sex assault trial, ordered to pay $5,000 .

Courts sometimes select individual cases from litigation that large and try them first to see how juries respond to recurring questions.

Lawyers call those bellwether trials .

In ordinary English, they are essentially test cases . They do not decide every other lawsuit. Instead, they give both sides information about which arguments work, which defenses succeed and how juries may value different kinds of claims.

Reuters described the Uber trials as cases intended to help gauge the remaining litigation and potentially inform eventual settlements in Uber ordered to pay $8.5 million in trial over driver sex assault claims .

The first two federal test cases produced strikingly different answers.

Jaylynn Dean's Case: An $8.5 Million Verdict

The first federal trial involved Jaylynn Dean, who was 19 when she requested an Uber ride in Arizona in November 2023.

Dean alleged that her driver sexually harassed her during the trip, stopped the vehicle and raped her. She later sued Uber.

Uber disputed that it should be legally responsible for the driver’s criminal conduct.

According to Uber ordered to pay $8.5 million in trial over driver sex assault claims , Uber argued that its drivers are independent contractors and that the driver involved had no criminal history, had completed approximately 10,000 trips and maintained a nearly perfect rider rating.

Uber’s attorneys argued that the alleged assault was therefore not something the company could reasonably have foreseen.

Dean’s lawyers advanced several theories against Uber.

The jury did not accept all of them.

Jurors rejected claims that Uber itself had been negligent and that its safety systems were defectively designed. They also declined Dean’s request for punitive damages.

But they accepted another theory that proved decisive: agency .

The jury concluded that the driver was acting as Uber’s agent, allowing Uber to be held legally responsible for his conduct.

Jurors awarded Dean $8.5 million in compensatory damages .

That distinction matters.

The verdict was not simply a jury declaring that “Uber’s safety system failed.” In fact, the jury rejected claims built specifically around Uber’s own negligence and product design.

Instead, Uber’s liability came through the legal relationship the jury found between the company and the driver.

Uber announced that it would appeal.

Two Months Later, Another Jury Heard a Very Different Case

The second federal trial began in North Carolina in April 2026.

The plaintiff, whose name was withheld from public court filings, alleged that she ordered an Uber ride in Raleigh in March 2019.

According to her claim, when the vehicle arrived at her destination shortly before 2 a.m., the driver grabbed her inner thigh and made a sexual comment. She fled from the vehicle.

Reuters reported before trial that Uber did not deny the incident occurred, although the company disputed its own legal responsibility. The background to that trial is detailed in Uber faces second driver sexual assault trial following $8.5 million verdict .

Uber again argued that it was a technology company whose drivers operate as independent contractors.

The company also raised a state-law issue that had not been central to Dean’s Arizona case: whether Uber should be treated like a common carrier , such as a traditional taxi service, with heightened obligations toward passengers under North Carolina law.

And there was another major difference.

Uber disputed the extent of the plaintiff’s damages.

Its attorneys argued that she had not demonstrated that the encounter caused the psychological harm for which she sought compensation and pointed to medical history predating the incident. The plaintiff’s lawyers contested Uber’s characterization of that evidence.

On April 20, 2026, the jury returned its verdict.

Uber was ordered to pay $5,000 , according to Reuters .

$8.5 Million and $5,000 Are Not Contradictory Results

On the surface, the awards almost look impossible to reconcile.

They are not.

A civil case generally involves more than one question.

There is the question of liability : Is this defendant legally responsible?

Then there is causation : What harm did the legally wrongful conduct actually cause?

Then there are damages : What amount of money fairly compensates for that harm under the evidence presented?

Two juries can reach similar conclusions on the first question while reaching completely different conclusions on the others.

Dean alleged rape and presented a claim involving substantial psychological trauma. Her jury awarded $8.5 million.

The North Carolina plaintiff alleged unwanted touching and a sexual remark. Uber aggressively contested her evidence of resulting harm, and the jury awarded $5,000.

The gap between those awards does not establish a going “price” for any particular kind of assault.

It demonstrates something more basic about civil litigation:

Proving that a defendant can be held responsible does not predetermine the amount of damages.

The evidence still matters enormously.

The Independent-Contractor Defense Did Not End Either Case

Another reason the trials are significant is Uber’s longstanding position that drivers using its platform are independent contractors rather than employees.

That classification matters in many areas of law, but calling someone an independent contractor does not automatically answer every question about whether a company may bear responsibility for that person’s conduct.

Dean’s case is the clearest example.

Her jury rejected direct-negligence theories against Uber but nevertheless found the company responsible after concluding that the driver was acting as its agent.

The second trial again forced jurors to confront Uber’s argument that it should not be legally responsible for conduct committed by an independently contracted driver.

Uber said after the $5,000 verdict that it believed the jury had been incorrectly instructed on liability and that it had grounds for appeal, as reported in Uber loses another US driver sex assault trial, ordered to pay $5,000 .

Neither verdict therefore ends the larger debate over the legal relationship between rideshare companies and the people driving passengers through their platforms.

But neither supports the idea that the words “independent contractor” automatically end the liability analysis.

There Was Already Evidence That Uber Could Prevail in These Cases

The two federal verdicts also should not be read in isolation.

Uber faced a separate coordinated group of sexual-assault cases in California state court.

In September 2025, a jury there reached another unusual result.

It found that Uber had been negligent in the safety measures it provided , but also concluded that Uber’s negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s assault .

Because the required causal connection was missing, Uber was not held liable to the plaintiff.

That earlier result was discussed alongside the federal litigation in Uber ordered to pay $8.5 million in trial over driver sex assault claims .

Taken together, the three trials illustrate three materially different paths:

A jury can find problems with Uber’s conduct but conclude those problems did not cause the particular assault.
A jury can impose responsibility and award millions of dollars.
A jury can impose responsibility but award comparatively little.

That is a much more accurate picture of the litigation than treating a single large verdict as proof that thousands of remaining cases will produce the same result.

What Do These Trials Mean for the Thousands of Other Uber Lawsuits?

Not nearly as much as a class-action headline might suggest, but considerably more than nothing.

The federal cases are part of multidistrict litigation , commonly shortened to MDL.

That procedure allows cases sharing factual issues to be coordinated rather than forcing thousands of courts to repeatedly litigate the same discovery disputes, company records and recurring legal questions.

But the individual claims remain individual claims.

That is precisely why test trials are useful.

The $8.5 million Dean verdict showed that a jury was willing to hold Uber responsible through an agency theory even after rejecting direct-negligence claims.

The $5,000 North Carolina verdict showed that establishing responsibility does not necessarily translate into a large damages award.

And Uber’s earlier California victory showed that even a finding of corporate negligence is insufficient where the plaintiff cannot establish the necessary causal connection.

Together, those results provide both sides with information that no legal brief can supply:

How actual juries react to these arguments.

They may eventually affect settlement discussions. They may influence which cases plaintiffs’ attorneys or Uber choose to try next. And appellate courts may still alter some of the legal rules being tested.

What they do not do is decide the remaining lawsuits automatically.

What This Means for Washington Rideshare Cases

Neither the Arizona verdict nor the North Carolina verdict establishes Washington law.

A Washington case involving an assault during an Uber or Lyft ride would have to be evaluated under Washington law and its own facts: what happened, what the platform knew, the driver’s relationship with the company, what safety measures were in place, what evidence exists and which particular legal theories apply.

That distinction becomes especially important when national rideshare litigation generates large headlines.

An $8.5 million verdict elsewhere does not guarantee an $8.5 million Washington case.

A $5,000 verdict elsewhere does not establish that another survivor’s damages are worth $5,000.

And the existence of thousands of similar lawsuits does not make those lawsuits identical.

The first two federal Uber sexual-assault trials actually demonstrate the opposite.

Two passengers.

Two alleged assaults.

Two juries considering Uber’s responsibility.

And two results separated by $8,495,000 .

That may be the clearest evidence yet that the next phase of rideshare assault litigation will turn not simply on whether Uber can ever be held accountable for a driver’s conduct, but when, why and for how much .

Sources

The Issaquah Uber Driver Murder Case That Reached the Ninth Circuit

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 21:42:18 GMT

The Issaquah Uber Driver Murder Case That Reached the Ninth Circuit — and Ended in a Confidential Settlement

On the night of December 13, 2020, Uber driver Cherno Ceesay accepted what appeared on his screen to be an ordinary ride request.

The rider account was not ordinary.

According to the criminal investigation and the later federal court record, the account was registered under the name "Stephanie Tylor." It had been created shortly before the ride using a prepaid phone and a prepaid gift card. The people allegedly behind it were Devin Wade and Olivia Bebic. Prosecutors later said they were looking for a vehicle to steal. ( KIRO 7, Dec. 21, 2020 ; W.D. Wash. summary-judgment order, Sept. 27, 2022 )

Ceesay arrived at the pickup location along Renton-Issaquah Road Southeast at about 9:18 p.m. Charging documents reported by KIRO placed the creation of the Uber account at roughly 8:50 p.m., the ride request at 9:03, Ceesay's arrival at 9:18, a crash at about 9:25, and the 911 call at approximately 9:35. Ceesay was found inside his vehicle after it struck a tree. He had suffered fatal stab wounds. ( KIRO 7 )

The criminal cases eventually ended with prison sentences. Wade pleaded guilty in March 2023 to second-degree murder and was sentenced that June to 18 years and four months. Bebic was sentenced to nine years and six months for first-degree manslaughter. ( KING 5, June 23, 2023 )

But the longer legal story concerned Uber.

For nearly five years after Ceesay's death, his family fought over a much more difficult question than who killed him: What responsibility, if any, did Uber have when its own platform matched a driver with riders whose identities it had not meaningfully verified?

That question produced an initial victory for Uber, an unusual trip through both the Ninth Circuit and the Washington Supreme Court certification process, a 2–1 appellate reversal, a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, and ultimately a confidential settlement shortly before the case was scheduled to go to trial.

A fake rider account became central to the civil case

Ceesay's parents, Amie Drammeh and Yusupha Ceesay, along with Maram Ceesay as personal representative of his estate, filed suit against Uber Technologies and Rasier in federal court in Seattle on February 17, 2021.

The lawsuit asserted negligence, wrongful death and Washington's statutory claim involving the death of a child. An early punitive-damages theory was dismissed without prejudice in June 2021, but the core negligence case continued. ( W.D. Wash. order, June 14, 2021 )

The family's argument was not simply that Uber should have somehow predicted Ceesay's murder.

It focused on the structure of the platform.

Uber controlled the digital system that brought riders and drivers together. It decided what information to collect from riders, what verification to require and what information a driver would see before deciding whether to accept a trip.

The record concerning the "Stephanie Tylor" account gave those questions particular significance. The district court described evidence that the account had been created with a prepaid phone and prepaid gift card. The plaintiffs argued that Uber had permitted someone to enter its marketplace, summon a driver to a chosen location and conceal the riders' actual identities behind an account name that was not theirs. ( Sept. 27, 2022 order )

The family also introduced evidence concerning prior violence against Uber drivers, including assaults and carjackings. Their theory was that Uber knew its matching system could place drivers in direct physical contact with dangerous riders while leaving the driver dependent on whatever screening and rider information Uber itself chose to provide.

Uber disputed that this created a legally recognized duty.

That dispute became the central issue in Drammeh v. Uber Technologies.

Uber initially won the case without a trial

On September 27, 2022, U.S. District Judge Barbara J. Rothstein granted summary judgment to Uber.

That meant the case was dismissed before a jury could decide whether Uber's conduct had actually contributed to Ceesay's death.

Under Washington negligence law, a plaintiff ordinarily must establish that the defendant owed a legal duty before questions such as breach and causation can go to trial. Criminal conduct by a third party presents an additional complication because the law does not automatically make one person or company responsible for protecting another from someone else's crimes.

The district court concluded that the family had not established the necessary duty.

Specifically, the court rejected the argument that Uber and Ceesay had the kind of "special relationship" that would impose a duty on Uber to protect him from riders' criminal acts. ( Sept. 27, 2022 order )

The court also found the plaintiffs had not established the necessary foreseeability.

One part of the plaintiffs' theory connected Uber's relatively limited rider-verification procedures to the danger presented by anonymous or fraudulent accounts. But the district court found the record insufficient to show a statistically significant connection between fake or anonymous accounts and carjackings.

Viewed through that lens, the sequence leading to Ceesay's death remained too attenuated for the court to impose liability.

Uber had therefore won the most consequential ruling available before trial: the entire case was dismissed on summary judgment.

The family appealed.

The Ninth Circuit saw Uber's relationship with its drivers differently

The appeal reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as Case No. 22-36038.

After oral argument in March 2024, the appellate panel encountered a problem: the central questions involved Washington tort law, yet Washington's appellate courts had not squarely answered how those principles should apply to a modern rideshare platform.

Rather than immediately decide the questions itself, the Ninth Circuit took the unusual step of asking the Washington Supreme Court for guidance.

On June 24, 2024, the federal court certified questions concerning whether a rideshare company has a special relationship with its drivers, whether an attempted carjacking and murder by riders could be legally foreseeable and, if a duty existed, what its scope would be.

The Washington Supreme Court declined to answer the certified questions on July 23, 2024.

That did not end the appeal. It meant the federal judges had to make their own prediction about how Washington's highest court would apply existing Washington law to the relationship between Uber and its drivers. ( Ninth Circuit disposition, Aug. 30, 2024 )

Five weeks later, the Ninth Circuit reversed Uber's summary-judgment victory by a 2–1 vote .

The reasoning turned heavily on something the district court had not considered sufficient:

Uber's control over the marketplace in which the driver was operating.

"Dependence and control" changed the duty analysis

A driver could choose whether to accept a ride.

The Ninth Circuit majority did not treat that fact as the end of the inquiry.

Once the platform is examined more closely, the court reasoned, the driver does not independently choose who has access to the Uber system, what information riders must provide, how those riders are verified or what information is presented to the driver.

Uber controls those functions.

That distinction mattered to the majority's analysis of a "special relationship" under Washington law.

The court focused on concepts of dependence, control and entrustment . Uber controlled the digital interface that connected Ceesay with the riders. Uber controlled the information available through that interface. And the driver necessarily depended on Uber to perform functions that the driver had no practical ability to perform independently before accepting each request.

Ceesay did not run his own identity check on "Stephanie Tylor."

He did not process the rider's payment himself.

He did not decide what identifying information a passenger had to give before being allowed to summon a vehicle.

Those were features of Uber's system.

The appellate majority therefore predicted that Washington law would recognize a special relationship requiring Uber to exercise reasonable care in matching drivers with riders . ( Ninth Circuit, Aug. 30, 2024 )

That did not amount to a finding that Uber had actually been negligent.

It answered an earlier question: whether Uber could owe Ceesay a duty at all.

A jury would still have had to resolve the factual questions that followed.

The courts also disagreed about what "foreseeable" meant

Foreseeability became the second major dividing line between the district court and the Ninth Circuit.

The distinction is important because the courts were not necessarily asking the same foreseeability question.

At the summary-judgment stage, there was first a legal question: was this kind of harm so unforeseeable that the case should be dismissed as a matter of law?

The Ninth Circuit said no.

The relevant danger, in its view, did not need to be defined as the exact sequence of events that occurred on December 13, 2020: two particular people creating one fraudulent account at a particular time, summoning Ceesay to one location and then attempting to steal his vehicle.

The majority instead looked at the broader category of danger: violent assault and attempted carjacking by riders whom Uber had matched with drivers.

The record contained evidence that Uber was aware drivers had previously experienced assaults and carjackings.

That was enough, the majority concluded, to prevent the court from saying the danger was legally unforeseeable altogether. ( Ninth Circuit disposition )

But that ruling did not establish the factual foreseeability necessary to impose liability.

That issue would still have belonged to the factfinder on remand: whether the attack on Ceesay fell within the general field of danger that made Uber's alleged conduct negligent under the circumstances.

The difference is easy to miss but central to understanding the result.

The Ninth Circuit did not hold that Uber caused Ceesay's murder.

It did not find Uber negligent.

It did not award damages.

It held that the district court had resolved the duty and foreseeability questions too broadly against the family and that the evidence was sufficient for the lawsuit to continue.

The prepaid phone and payment method mattered because Uber controlled the gate

The "Stephanie Tylor" account was relevant for more than its false name.

The district-court record described the use of a prepaid phone and prepaid gift card in establishing the rider account.

Those details fed directly into the plaintiffs' larger argument about control.

A rideshare driver generally cannot conduct a meaningful identity investigation while a ride request is waiting on the screen. The information available to the driver is the information the platform has chosen to collect and expose through the app.

The family therefore argued that Uber occupied the point at which potentially anonymous riders entered the system.

The Ninth Circuit's reasoning did not create a blanket rule requiring one particular form of rider identification. Nor did it hold that accepting prepaid phones or payment methods was itself negligent.

Instead, those facts helped illustrate why the majority believed the relationship involved dependence: Uber possessed control over information and verification processes that the driver did not possess.

That was enough for the majority to reject the district court's conclusion that no special relationship existed as a matter of law. ( Ninth Circuit disposition )

Judge Bumatay dissented

The Ninth Circuit's ruling was not unanimous.

Judge Patrick Bumatay dissented from the decision to reverse summary judgment.

That division matters because the majority was predicting Washington law after Washington's own Supreme Court had declined the invitation to answer the certified questions.

Uber later made that circumstance part of its argument for U.S. Supreme Court review, contending that the Ninth Circuit had improperly expanded state tort law after the state's highest court declined certification.

The majority's ruling nevertheless controlled the remainder of Drammeh.

Summary judgment was reversed, and the case returned to federal district court for further proceedings.

The August 2024 ruling was not published precedent

The status of the Ninth Circuit decision needs to be stated carefully.

The August 30, 2024 disposition expressly says that it is "not for publication" and "not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3." ( Ninth Circuit disposition )

That means the case should not be described as creating a new binding rule for every Washington rideshare lawsuit.

It was decisive in Drammeh. Its analysis of platform control, driver dependence and foreseeability is legally noteworthy. But an unpublished federal appellate disposition does not become binding statewide Washington precedent simply because the court had to interpret Washington law.

The Washington Supreme Court never adopted the Ninth Circuit's formulation.

That limitation became particularly significant once Uber sought review in Washington, D.C.

Uber asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene

After rehearing was denied in the Ninth Circuit on October 24, 2024, Uber Technologies and Rasier sought review from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Uber filed its petition for a writ of certiorari on March 21, 2025, after Justice Elena Kagan granted additional time for the filing.

The petition placed the Ninth Circuit's treatment of state tort law before the nation's highest court and challenged the appellate decision that had revived the family's claims. ( U.S. Supreme Court docket, Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Drammeh, No. 24-1020 )

On October 6, 2025, the Supreme Court denied certiorari.

A denial of certiorari is not an endorsement of the Ninth Circuit's reasoning. The Supreme Court ordinarily gives no explanation for declining review, and a cert denial does not convert the underlying decision into Supreme Court precedent.

What it did mean for the parties was straightforward: Uber had exhausted that route for overturning the appellate judgment.

The Ninth Circuit's reversal remained intact, and Drammeh headed back toward trial.

The case was scheduled for an April 2026 trial

Back in the Western District of Washington, the litigation resumed.

The case was ultimately set for trial on April 6, 2026 .

Had the case reached a jury, the family still would have faced consequential unresolved questions.

The Ninth Circuit had determined that Uber could owe a duty and that rider assault and carjacking were not legally unforeseeable as a categorical matter.

A jury still could have been required to determine issues including whether Uber breached the duty of reasonable care the Ninth Circuit recognized; whether Ceesay's murder fell within the factual field of danger presented by the alleged shortcomings in Uber's system; whether any alleged breach caused the harm; and, if liability were established, the amount of compensable damages.

None of those questions produced a jury verdict.

The case settled first.

A December 2025 settlement conference ended the litigation

On December 9, 2025, the parties participated in a settlement conference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paula L. McCandlis.

The matter was resolved before the scheduled April trial. Subsequent reporting described the terms as confidential. ( Law360, Jan. 2026 ; docket-based settlement report )

On January 14, 2026, the parties filed a stipulation dismissing all claims, and the federal docket records the case as terminated. ( CourtListener )

The amount paid, if any, has not been publicly disclosed.

There was no civil damages verdict.

The distinction is especially important in this case because the family did achieve an important appellate victory. But reversing summary judgment is not the same thing as winning liability at trial.

The Ninth Circuit gave the family the opportunity to present the surviving case. The settlement ended the litigation before a jury could decide it.

What Drammeh v. Uber does — and does not — establish for Washington rideshare cases

Drammeh is significant because a Ninth Circuit panel rejected the proposition that Uber's relationship with its drivers could be treated as legally hands-off simply because the immediate violence was committed by riders.

The majority focused on the practical architecture of rideshare work: the platform controls the matching system, controls what it requires from riders, controls what information reaches drivers, and places the driver in a position of dependence on those choices.

It also rejected an extremely narrow approach to foreseeability. The relevant question was not whether Uber could have predicted the precise murder of Cherno Ceesay by Devin Wade and Olivia Bebic on one stretch of Renton-Issaquah Road. For purposes of deciding whether the lawsuit could proceed, the relevant category was rider violence, including assault and attempted carjacking, viewed against evidence concerning Uber's knowledge of previous incidents.

But the decision has firm limits.

It was an unpublished Ninth Circuit disposition , not binding Washington Supreme Court precedent. It did not hold that Uber is automatically liable whenever a driver is attacked. It did not establish that every use of an anonymous, prepaid or falsely named rider account constitutes negligence. It did not decide breach, factual causation or damages in Ceesay's case.

And because the parties settled before trial, no jury ever answered those questions.

What Drammeh ultimately established in its own litigation was narrower but consequential: under the Ninth Circuit majority's prediction of Washington law, the family had presented enough on duty and foreseeability to get past summary judgment and continue toward trial.

After more than four years of civil litigation, that trial never happened.

The case ended instead with a confidential agreement and a January 14, 2026 dismissal.

Sources

U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, June 14, 2021 — Early order addressing the complaint, claims and punitive damages.
U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, Sept. 27, 2022 — Summary-judgment order addressing rider-account facts, verification, duty and foreseeability.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Aug. 30, 2024 — Unpublished 2–1 disposition reversing summary judgment.
U.S. Supreme Court, Uber Technologies, Inc. v. Drammeh, No. 24-1020 — Petition filed March 21, 2025; certiorari denied October 6, 2025.
KIRO 7, Dec. 21, 2020 — "Man, woman face murder charges in death of Uber driver" — Charging-document reporting on the killing and timeline.
KING 5, June 23, 2023 — "Suspect in Issaquah Uber driver murder sentenced" — Criminal pleas and sentences for Devin Wade and Olivia Bebic.
Federal docket — Drammeh v. Uber Technologies, Inc. — January 14, 2026 termination following the parties' stipulated dismissal.

Uber Was Found Negligent but Not Liable. How Can Both Be True?

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 23:16:06 GMT

A 2025 California rideshare-assault trial produced a result that sounds contradictory until the elements of a negligence case are separated: jurors found fault in Uber’s safety conduct, but they did not find the required causal link between that negligence and the assault at issue.

The verdict turned on more than whether Uber acted reasonably

In September 2025, a California jury returned a verdict in a sexual-assault case against Uber that drew attention because of the way the findings split. According to Reuters, jurors found Uber negligent in the measures it took to protect the plaintiff. But they also found that the negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the assault. That second finding meant the plaintiff did not recover damages from Uber in that trial.

The result is a useful reminder that a negligence case is not a one-question referendum on whether a company could have done more. A plaintiff ordinarily must establish a duty, a breach of that duty, causation, and legally compensable harm under the law governing the case. A failure at the causation step can defeat the claim even after a jury concludes the defendant acted negligently.

Negligence and causation answer different questions

“Was the defendant negligent?” asks whether the defendant failed to use the level of care the law required under the circumstances. “Did that negligence cause the plaintiff’s injury?” asks something different: whether the identified failure was sufficiently connected to what happened.

That distinction matters in rideshare cases because the alleged wrong and the immediate act causing harm may involve different people. A plaintiff may point to screening, warning, monitoring, account controls, safety features or other platform practices. The assault itself, however, is committed by an individual. The legal case therefore has to connect a particular platform failure to the particular assault, not merely establish that a stronger safety program would have been preferable in the abstract.

Why “Uber was negligent” was not the end of the case

The 2025 verdict did not amount to a finding that Uber had no safety responsibility. The jury’s negligence finding cut the other way. But civil liability required more than criticism of Uber’s conduct. Reuters reported that the jury did not find Uber’s negligence to be a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s assault.

That is why the shorthand “Uber was found negligent but not liable” is accurate even though it sounds unusual. The jury could answer one element in the plaintiff’s favor and another element against her. Civil verdict forms routinely break claims into component questions for exactly that reason.

The verdict also should not be treated as a universal rideshare rule

One trial involving one plaintiff does not establish that Uber can never be held liable for an assault by a driver. Other rideshare-assault cases have involved different legal theories, different evidence and different outcomes. The federal multidistrict litigation against Uber, for example, has tested agency and other theories in bellwether trials with materially different verdicts.

Nor should the California causation standard be pasted onto every Washington case. State law controls many of the duty and causation questions that arise in tort litigation. The useful lesson from this verdict is narrower: proving that a platform acted negligently and proving that its negligence legally caused a particular injury are related, but separate, tasks.

What evidence can make causation the center of a rideshare case

When causation is disputed, the case often becomes intensely factual. Timing can matter. So can complaint history, prior incidents, account records, driver screening or rescreening information, what warnings were given, what the company knew, and whether a particular safety measure would have changed the sequence of events.

That is why broad claims such as “Uber should have made riders safer” or “the driver was an independent contractor” rarely tell the whole story. The actual legal dispute may turn on a much more precise question: what did the platform allegedly do wrong , and can the evidence connect that failure to the harm that followed?

Sources

What the Justice Department’s "Uber Pet" Lawsuit Alleges

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:35:41 GMT

Service Dogs Are Not “Uber Pet”: What the Justice Department’s Uber Lawsuit Alleges

A passenger traveling with a service animal is not asking a driver to opt into a pet ride. That distinction sits at the center of a federal disability-access dispute in which the U.S. Department of Justice sued Uber over alleged ride denials and other treatment of passengers with service animals and stowable wheelchairs.

The Justice Department sued Uber in September 2025

The Department of Justice alleged that Uber violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act through practices affecting riders with service animals and riders who use stowable wheelchairs. Among the allegations were ride denials, cancellation-related charges and failures to make reasonable modifications for passengers with disabilities.

The government sought injunctive relief, civil penalties and monetary relief for affected individuals. Those allegations are claims in pending litigation, not findings that Uber has been proven liable.

Uber tried to dismiss the case and the lawsuit continued

According to the Justice Department’s case page, the United States opposed Uber’s motion to dismiss in February 2026. In March 2026, the court denied the motion, allowing the case to proceed.

A denial of a motion to dismiss is not a judgment on the ultimate merits. It means the case survived that procedural challenge and the government’s claims could continue through litigation.

Why Uber Pet is legally different

Uber Pet is an optional product for riders traveling with ordinary pets. Uber’s own materials say service animals are permitted without an additional pet charge regardless of whether Uber Pet is selected. In other words, a passenger with a qualifying service animal is not buying a premium pet accommodation.

That is the misconception worth correcting. A driver’s willingness to accept ordinary pets and the legal treatment of a service animal are not the same question.

Uber’s service-animal policy is explicit

Uber’s U.S. service-animal policy states that drivers generally may not deny service because a rider is traveling with a service animal. The policy also says allergies, religious objections or a generalized fear of animals do not create exceptions to the obligation described in the policy.

The DOJ lawsuit is therefore not based on an absence of written policy. The dispute concerns alleged real-world denials and whether Uber’s practices and responses satisfied federal disability law.

Wheelchair access is part of the same federal case

The government’s allegations also concern passengers who use stowable wheelchairs. The issue is not limited to specialized wheelchair-accessible vehicles. A folding or stowable mobility device can raise questions about reasonable modification, driver conduct and whether the passenger was denied an otherwise available ride.

That makes the case broader than a service-dog dispute. It tests how an app-based transportation platform implements disability-access obligations through a large decentralized driver network.

The practical point for riders is simple

A service animal is not a pet for purposes of the accommodation at issue. Selecting a pet-friendly ride should not be treated as the prerequisite for traveling with a qualifying service animal. Riders who experience a denial may also have app records, cancellation records, messages and receipts that document what happened.

The federal lawsuit remains a useful public example because it separates the platform’s written accessibility rules from the question of how consistently those rules are followed in actual rides.

Sources

Rider Verification Finally Gave Drivers More Information; Now What?

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 23:41:33 GMT

Uber and Lyft spent years giving passengers detailed information about drivers while drivers often received little more than a rider name and rating. Verified-rider badges narrow that information gap, but the badge is not a background check and it is not a guarantee that a trip will be safe.

What Uber says it verifies

Uber expanded rider verification in the United States in 2024. The company says rider account information can be checked against trusted third-party databases and that riders whose information cannot be validated through those checks may verify with identification. A verified badge can then appear to the driver.

The practical purpose is straightforward: give drivers more confidence that the account is associated with a real person whose information has been checked. That is materially different from accepting a request from an account with little identity assurance.

Lyft uses a similar identity-confidence model

Lyft says it cross-checks information such as a rider’s legal name and phone number against trusted third-party databases. When that process cannot validate the information, Lyft may ask the rider to submit identification. The company began testing rider verification in cities including Seattle in 2024 and later expanded the program.

Lyft also makes an important limitation explicit in its driver materials: a rider can be unverified and still request a ride. Verification status is information for the driver, not necessarily a gate that blocks every unverified account from the platform.

A verified badge is not a rider background check

Identity verification answers “Is there stronger evidence this account belongs to the person represented?” A criminal background check asks a different question about a person’s history.

Neither Uber nor Lyft describes the ordinary rider-verification badge as a criminal-background-screening result.

That distinction matters because “verified” can sound broader than it is. A verified rider is not certified harmless. The badge does not establish that the rider has no criminal history, no false intentions and no ability to misuse someone else’s account or involve another person in the trip.

Verification can still matter in a safety investigation

Limits do not make verification meaningless. Better identity information can matter after an assault, robbery, fraud allegation or other serious incident. Account records may help investigators determine who ordered a ride, what information was associated with the account and whether the person completed an identity-verification process.

For drivers, the badge can also affect the decision to accept a trip. Both companies have marketed verification as part of a broader safety system that includes trip recording, emergency tools, account information and other features.

The remaining weakness is the gap between account identity and actual conduct

Every identity system has a basic boundary: confirming an account holder does not control what that person will do. It also does not necessarily establish that the verified account holder is the only person who will enter the vehicle. Group rides, account sharing, stolen credentials and off-platform encounters can create risks that a badge was never designed to eliminate.

That is why rider verification should be described as one layer of risk reduction. It reduces anonymity. It does not eliminate uncertainty.

Why the feature matters more than the blue check itself

The broader shift is significant. Rideshare platforms historically concentrated screening and identity disclosure on drivers because passengers needed to know who was picking them up. Driver-safety concerns have forced the industry to confront the reverse problem: drivers are also meeting strangers, often alone and in confined spaces.

Verification makes that asymmetry smaller. The next policy question is not whether the badge is useful, but how consistently it is applied, what information supports it and how platforms respond when a verified account is later connected to dangerous conduct.

Sources

Are Uber and Lyft Background Checks the Same Everywhere?

Tue, 10 Sep 2024 23:53:54 GMT

“Rideshare drivers get background checks” is true at a high level and incomplete in practice. A 2024 federal review found a patchwork of state and local rules governing what screening is required, who performs it and whether fingerprint-based checks are part of the process.

There is no single national rideshare-screening statute

The Government Accountability Office reviewed background-check requirements under Sami’s Law and found that 45 states and the District of Columbia required criminal background checks for prospective rideshare drivers. That is broad coverage, but it is not one uniform federal system.

States can differ on disqualifying offenses, lookback periods, the databases or methods used, and whether a company, a third-party screening provider or a government entity performs the check. Local rules can add another layer.

Fingerprint-based and name-based checks are not the same process

One of the recurring policy disagreements is whether drivers should undergo fingerprint-based screening. Fingerprints can be checked against government criminal-history databases. Name-based commercial checks use identifying information to search records from other sources. Each method has strengths and limitations, and jurisdictions do not all mandate the same one.

GAO’s review is useful because it avoids treating “background check” as a single standardized product. Two drivers in different states may both have passed the screening required to use the same app while having gone through different legal requirements.

Company practices can go beyond the minimum law

Uber states that U.S. drivers are screened before their first trip and that background checks are rerun at least annually, with ongoing monitoring for certain new criminal-record information. The company also notes that local law can affect the period of criminal history reviewed.

Lyft likewise describes criminal and driving-record screening as part of driver eligibility. Those company practices matter, but a national description of company policy still does not erase state-specific disqualification rules or local regulatory requirements.

Taxi rules are often even more local

GAO found a different regulatory structure for taxis. Only a smaller number of states had statewide taxi background-check requirements in the federal review, in part because taxi regulation has traditionally been handled by cities, counties and local licensing authorities.

That makes “Uber background checks versus taxi background checks” a poor national yes-or-no question. The answer can change when the city changes.

A background check is a screening tool, not a prediction machine

Even a thorough criminal-history search can only report records that exist, are accessible and are correctly matched to the person being screened. It cannot identify conduct that was never reported or predict future behavior with certainty. Continuous monitoring can identify some new records after a driver is approved, but it remains dependent on the underlying data.

This does not make screening unimportant. It explains why serious rideshare-safety cases often examine the details: what information existed, what the applicable rules required, what the company obtained and whether a disqualifying fact should have been acted on.

For a real case, the jurisdiction and date matter

Background-check laws change. A driver approved in one state in 2021 may have been subject to a different set of requirements from a driver applying somewhere else in 2026. Any serious evaluation therefore has to identify the state, city when relevant, approval date and company policy then in effect.

The accurate answer is not that Uber and Lyft background checks are identical everywhere. They operate inside a regulatory patchwork, and the details can matter when screening becomes an issue in litigation.

Sources

Does Rideshare Reduce Drunk Driving or Put More Cars Into Crash Zones?

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:12:03 GMT

Two ideas can be true at once: rideshare can give people an alternative to driving after drinking, while high ride-hailing activity can also add vehicle movement and crash exposure. Research has found evidence pointing to both effects because the studies measure different outcomes in different places.

The strongest drunk-driving finding is national and mortality-focused

Research summarized by UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and published through the National Bureau of Economic Research examined Uber activity across tens of thousands of U.S. census tracts alongside federal fatal-crash data. The researchers estimated that rideshare availability reduced total traffic fatalities by about 4 percent and alcohol-related traffic fatalities by about 6.1 percent.

The intuitive mechanism is clear: a person who would otherwise drive after drinking has another transportation option. The study also used detailed variation in ride activity rather than simply comparing “Uber city” to “non-Uber city.”

A New York City study found a different kind of risk

A separate spatial study of New York City examined ride-hailing trip origins and injury crashes at the taxi-zone and hourly level. It found that an additional 100 rideshare trip origins in a zone-hour was associated with a 4.6 percent increase in the odds of an injury crash.

That study was not measuring national traffic deaths or specifically asking whether drunk-driving deaths fell. It was measuring localized injury-crash risk where rideshare trip activity increased.

Those findings are not mutually exclusive

One study can find fewer alcohol-related deaths nationally while another finds more injury-crash exposure in high-activity urban zones. The first effect can come from substituting a sober rideshare driver for an impaired driver. The second can come from additional vehicle trips, pickups, drop-offs, stopping, turning and curbside interactions.

The relevant unit of analysis also differs. Fatality studies focus on rare but severe outcomes. Injury-crash studies can capture a much broader range of collisions.

“More rideshare” is not one traffic condition

A late-night ride home from a bar may remove an impaired driver from the road. A cluster of rideshare vehicles circling a stadium, double-parking near nightlife or repeatedly entering a dense pickup zone can create different traffic conflicts. Both activities count as rideshare use, but their safety effects are not identical.

That is why local street design, congestion, pickup rules and transit alternatives can influence what happens when ride-hailing volume increases.

Association and causation still require care

Neither result should be simplified beyond the study design. The Berkeley/NBER work uses econometric methods to estimate the effect of ridesharing on fatalities, while the New York study is a spatial ecological case-crossover analysis of rideshare activity and injury crashes. They address different causal questions and have different limitations.

A headline saying “Uber makes roads safer” ignores added exposure. A headline saying “Uber causes more crashes” ignores substitution away from impaired driving and overstates what a localized association can establish.

The policy question is how to keep the benefit without importing unnecessary risk

The research points toward a more useful conversation than choosing one slogan. Ride-hailing may reduce alcohol-impaired driving while cities still need to manage the traffic created by high-volume pickup and drop-off activity.

Designated loading zones, event pickup plans, enforcement around unsafe stopping and better curb management can address one side of the equation without giving up the other. The safety effect of rideshare depends not only on whether people use it, but on where, when and how those trips are absorbed into the street network.