Gurgaon: I booked an Uber Bike at 7.42pm on Wednesday from my Udyog Vihar office in Gurgaon to my home in Dwarka, expecting a routine ride home. However, the journey took an unexpected and frightening turn when the driver stopped the bike midway and asked me to get down. He said he mistook the destination for Qutub Minar, whereas my destination was Qutub Vihar. He said it would require him to travel a long way and refused to take me to my destination. He then abruptly ended the ride near Rajokri along the highway, leaving me stranded on a dark and unlit stretch surrounded by heavy, fast-moving traffic.The moment I got off the bike, I realised how unsafe the spot was. The stretch was dark and largely unlit, with heavy, fast-moving traffic. There were people around, but that did little to make me feel safer. Several strangers offered me a lift. I refused, but some of them kept looking back at me, which left me extremely uncomfortable.I thought of walking ahead to a better-lit spot, but the road appeared to get darker, visibility was poor, and I was not comfortable moving into an unfamiliar, isolated stretch. I stayed where I was and tried to arrange another ride. It took around 30 minutes to book one.I immediately reported the incident on the Uber app, explaining that my concern was not just that the trip had been ended midway, but that I had been left at an unsafe location at night. I made it clear that I did not want compensation or a refund. I wanted action against the driver. All Uber offered was a Rs 50 credit. When I wrote back to clarify, it again said Rs 50 was what it could offer for the inconvenience. When I called to escalate, a representative told me that such compensation was part of Uber’s policy.Uber’s response left me more unsettled than the incident itself. For me, this was never about the inconvenience of booking another ride. It was that a woman travelling alone at night was left on a dark highway, with fast-moving traffic around her, after a driver decided not to complete the ride. When a woman reports being stranded in such a place, should the response be a Rs 50 credit, or should the focus first be on the conduct that created the safety risk?In a city where safety of women is among major public concerns, shouldn’t people working a public-facing job be sensitised? And shouldn’t their employers or aggregators be held accountable?
