Welcome to the latest edition of AFT NewsWatch, a weekly service of Advocates for Fairness in Transportation, an ad hoc group of regulated transportation service companies dedicated to informing and educating the public on threats to public safety from new so-called ride-sharing or ride-booking services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. Visit the Archive to read previous editions.

Drivers for Uber, Lyft are not part of Vision Zero safety training in SF 

In San Francisco's tight city streets, speeding vehicles are as dangerous as any weapon. Fighting back against pedestrian deaths, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and other city groups provide pedestrian and bicycle safety training to nearly every professional driver under our famous fog -- everyone, that is, except Transportation Network Company drivers. Drivers with Uber, Lyft and other so-called ride-hailing apps receive no safety training from these groups and generally lack robust training of their own.

Read more from The San Francisco Examiner

Uber, Lyft cases focus on drivers' legal status

A pair of court rulings involving Lyft Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. may have far-reaching consequences for the ride-sharing firms, and may help to bring clarity to a murky but increasingly important area of employment law. A verdict that required Lyft or Uber to reclassify their drivers as employees would throw a wrench in business models that have commanded large investments and valuations.

Wall Street Journal

Uber sued over driver data breach, adding to legal woes

Uber Technologies Inc has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over a recently disclosed data breach involving the personal information of about 50,000 drivers, the latest in a series of legal woes to hit the Internet car service. The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco by Sasha Antman, an Uber driver in Portland, Oregon, says the company did not do enough to prevent the 2014 breach and waited too long -- about five months -- to disclose it.

New York Daily News

Inside the dirty war that pits taxi companies against Uber

David Sutton is looking for the worst possible news about Uber Technologies. An accident in San Francisco, an assault in Boston: Such bad tidings for Uber are ammunition for Sutton, a 48-year-old publicist. "Uber is a creep magnet," Sutton says in a news release sent to U.S. local and national media outlets in February. Sutton is a hired gun in the dirty war that's broken out between old-line taxi companies and Uber, the ride-share phenom. 

Read more from Bloomberg

Uber's women initiative is nothing but PR

Uber's attitude towards women has been repeatedly called into question since the service's inception in 2010, with a spate of recent incidents adding to its increasingly negative reputation. A lawsuit is currently underway in Delhi, where a 26-year-old woman was reportedly raped in one of their cars-a crime which led to the service being temporarily banned across India's capital city; another was kidnapped for several hours in LA, a journey they later described as an "inefficient route" and only partially refunded; a senior executive at the company was privately recorded encouraging that dirt be "dug up" on its critics, with particular reference to a female journalist; and tales of harassment, both during and after journeys, where some drivers have been found to have access to passengers' personal details, have been worryingly frequent. 

Read more from The Daily Beast

Congress presses Uber and Lyft on driver background checks

Ride-sharing companies are not strangers to Congressional inquiries. Last week a group of Congressional Democrats hit the CEOs of Uber, Sidecar and Lyft with another letter, this time demanding the companies conduct more comprehensive background checks on their drivers to better protect customers from sexual assaults. Although these companies conduct internal screenings, the cohort of lawmakers do not believe they go far enough. 

Read more from TechCrunch

Uber shuts down service in Bay County after PCB driver arrest

Ride-sharing service Uber suspended operations in Bay County after Panama City Beach Police arrested a driver for operating a taxi without a permit. The company, which uses a smartphone application to connect riders and drivers, launched service in the area in December, but only recently began seeing a demand for the service with the arrival of Spring Break. 

Panama City News Herald

Uber urges city drivers to pick up illegal fares in Hamptons

Uber bosses routinely encourage drivers to make illegal pickups in the Hamptons by enticing them with the promise of "higher earnings" and "double NYC" rates, The Post has learned. City-based drivers are permitted to make out-of-town pickups only if the car is dispatched from the five boroughs. The only exception is East Hampton, which grants Uber special permission to operate. 

Read more from the New York Post

Uber driver struck by alleged drunken driver feels deceived by company

After a 10News story about an ugly Uber encounter caught on a dashcam, several emails came in from frustrated Uber drivers. One of the drivers who contacted 10News was Jonathan Sapan, a UC San Diego doctoral student who's been driving locally for Uber for nearly two years. Sapan's car was totaled, and when he contacted Uber, he said he got a shock in the form of a $1,000 deductible for the loss. "I felt angry and betrayed," said Sapan.

ABC10 San Diego