Despite years of press coverage on the pros and cons of the gig economy, less focus has been given to the question of whether app-based corporations do enough to protect workers’ lives. Data gathered from the last 5 years by The Markup and the advocacy group Gig Workers Rising indicates that they have not.

According to a recent report "Death And Corporate Irresponsibility In The Gig Economy: An Urgent Safety Crisis," Gig Workers Rising's research found news reports, legal filings, police records and family accounts indicating that over 50 gig workers have been killed on the job since 2017 in just the United States. The true number is likely to be much greater as gig corporations don’t regularly disclose the number of homicides that occur for people working using their app.

Recent reporting from The Markup also revealed that Uber reported more than 350 gig workers were carjacked, 28 killed, and 24,000 physically assaulted and threatened by passengers between 2017 and 2020. There have also been numerous reports of sexual assaults by drivers against passengers.  

There is relatively little government oversight of these companies, so we looked at whether change is possible to better protect rideshare drivers and passengers. We spoke with Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and author of the book "Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy" and Bobby Allyn, business and tech reporter for NPR.