Dallas Woman Says Uber Driver Acted Inappropriately
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A woman is concerned for the safety of others after she says her Uber driver acted inappropriately.
Briana Andrews is a frequent Uber customer but says an eight minute ride on Wednesday felt like a lifetime.
Andrews says her driver, who's deaf, asked her to sit in the front seat after picking her up. She thought it was to help with communication or navigation. But it wasn't long before he started to type inappropriate things on his phone and showing them to her.
"I felt violated -- completely violated. I was in shock," says Andrews, who believes the driver uses his phone to help him communicate.
She says one of the texts read "Are you a wild girl?"
"I think he knew what he was doing," say Andrews. "I think he knew if there was a paper trail, he would be in trouble and he knew he was being gross and that's why he was deleting everything."
Andrews says he would show her an inappropriate text, then delete it having never actually sent it. But he wasted no time taking the conversation to a place she clearly didn't want it to go.
"He asked if he could touch me, I gave him a stern 'no'... gave him a look that it is not ok," says Andrews.
Even though the ride to Deep Ellum was short, it left an impact on her.
She gave the driver a poor rating, immediately notified Uber and filed a report with the Dallas Police department.
"I was sober, trying to get to where I'm going but there's so many people girls and guys that take Uber because they're drunk and they don't need to be driving. So if he's willing to ask me if he could touch me, what about the girl that's passed out?"
Uber said they take allegations like this seriously and immediately began looking into the Andrew's allegations. A company spokesperson says they haven't received this kind of feedback about this particular driver before.
The company removed the driver's access to Uber pending his investigation and says they will assist law enforcement as needed for an investigation.
The company emailed CBS11 the following statement:
"It's disappointing to hear what has been described to have happened. As soon as we received Briana's feedback of her experience, we immediately removed this driver's access to Uber as we look further into this to understand what may happened."
Uber recommends riders share their ETA with friends and family so they can follow their route and know when to expect them.
That's exactly what Andrews says she did.
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