Uber Passenger Who Feared For Her Life As Driver Drove At Breakneck Speeds Offered $5 Voucher

An Uber passenger who says she “feared for her life” after a harrowing ride at breakneck speeds along the highway and city streets — a ride that included running at least three stop lights — is furious that she was offered only a $5 voucher in compensation, CTV News reports.

Alanna Moness says that in the wee hours of the morning on December 22, after a night of partying with friends in Toronto, she called an Uber. No sooner had she gotten in the car, she says, than the driver allegedly began treating traffic rules as more of an inconvenience.

“We took the Don Valley Parkway home, he was weaving in and out of cars going 140 km/h [87mph],” she said.

Off the freeway and on to surface streets, things didn’t improve, she says. At one point, as they were traveling through a residential area in suburban Thornhill, the woman says the driver drove 54 mph in a 25 mph zone. At another point, he allegedly drove 57 mph in a 31 mph zone.

The woman purportedly has screenshots from traffic-monitoring app Waze that prove how fast the driver was going and where he was at the time.

Besides allegedly flagrantly disobeying the speed limit, Moness says her driver also disregarded traffic-control devices, saying that he ran at least three stop signs. She has video of him allegedly driving through one intersection with a stop sign without him even bothering to tap on the brakes.

Moness says that she texted her brother while she was in the car, explaining what was going on. When she got home, with her brother standing by as moral support, she gave the driver a piece of her mind.

“I told the driver, when my brother was with me, that I am going to report him because I’ve never felt so unsafe in my life but he didn’t seem to care,” she said.

So why didn’t she complain while she was in the car? She says that because she is a young woman, and the driver a man, she feared that complaining might have incited him to violence against her.

When she called Uber to complain, she says that the representative merely apologized for her inconvenience and offered her a $5 voucher. She made multiple follow-up calls, she said, and the company consistently refused to budge.

Contacted by CTV News, however, the company changed its tune, reimbursing the young woman for the nearly $50 she spent on the trip, and removing the driver.

“We recognize the role we have in contributing to the safety of everyone on the platform and the communities where we operate. Once we learned of this report, we removed this driver’s access to the app as we look into this further,” an Uber spokeswoman said.

Moness, meanwhile, has given her photos, videos, and Waze data to the police.