Rideshare company Uber is threatening to withdraw service from the state if a rideshare bill passes at the Colorado State Capitol.
For some time, rideshare drivers like David Krouse said they are happy feel happy providing a vital service to the Denver community despite some minor inconveniences they may face with riders.
“It’s been mostly fine, I’ve had a few people who are paranoid or at times disruptive or problematic,” said Krouse.
Even during the times when riders may become problematic during his rides, he feels as though applications like Uber and Lyft have the resources to make sure he and his drivers feel safe.
“As a driver, what you can do is call ADT,” said Krouse. “They literally put a live person on the phone, and they ask, ‘Do you need medical or emergency, do you need the police?’”
However, the feeling of safety when getting behind the wheel of a rideshare vehicle has not been the same experience for everyone.
“I was sexually assaulted last February,” said Rep. Jenny Wilford, who serves District 34. “Before you get into a rideshare, you should always make sure you check that the vehicle matches the vehicle in the app, and the person looks relatively similar to the person in the vehicle, and I did those things. Upon being assaulted, I have learned that the driver who was driving me didn’t actually have the app. he was a part of a group of people that share passwords and share access and logins to the app.”
Since that experience, Wilford has learned she’s not the only one in Colorado who faced something similar.
“I’ve heard from so many people across our state, including people outside of our state, sharing horrific stories of incidents that happened to them, both as riders and drivers,” said Wilford. “It became really clear there was an issue here to be solved.”
Rideshare driver David Krouse CBS
She thinks the solution to safety is House Bill 1291, which she introduced with bipartisan support in this year’s legislative session. The measure will require, among a number of things, more safeguards for rideshare vehicles, including continuous audio and video recording during rides.
“A background check every six months,” added Wilford. “Additionally, there is a prohibition on offering food and beverages. We’ve heard a lot of cases of people being offered a bottle of water that was drugged and having no knowledge of the fact that it was drugged till it was too late.”
Some rideshare users believe this is a step in the right direction.
“My partner, when I’m not riding with her, I want her to feel safe and secure,” said resident Dave S.
“The more security that they have, the more comfortable you feel to use it,” said Greg Brito, who was visiting Denver from Mexico this week.
Yet, as a driver, Krouse sees this bill differently.
“We’re not comfortable being treated like this,” said David Krouse, a rideshare driver. “It’s such a massive overreach and it’s very invasive.”
He says recording rides breaches privacy and worries about how the data will be used outside of helping victims.
“You don’t know who’s going to be snooping, and not everyone is comfortable being filmed,” said Krouse. “I have a phone. I can record what’s going on if something comes up, but it’s very weird that the government now wants to mandate that a major corporation is recording us.”
Wilford says parameters for how the data will be used will be established by the Public Utilities Commission if the bill becomes law.
“We’ve asked the public utilities commission, which is the primary regulator for ride share companies in Colorado, to take the lead on establishing rules on data retention, who can access it, when they can access it, how long the data should be stored, etc,” she said.
Uber has already taken a stance against the bill. This month, they began rolling out a petition within their rideshare app stating that if House Bill 1291 is implemented, it would leave them no choice but to cease operations in Colorado.
A spokesperson with Uber shared the following statement regarding their concerns:
“Uber has led the industry on safety from day one—backed by technology, transparency, and real accountability. We don’t just talk about safety; we build it into the core of our platform with robust background checks and features like Audio and Video Recording, an Emergency Button, PIN verification, and RideCheck.
HB25-1291 is a deeply flawed proposal, which if implemented could leave us no choice but cease operations in Colorado. It threatens user privacy by requiring every trip to be recorded, imposes major technical and financial burdens, and offers no clear safety benefit in return. We support real, evidence-based safety policy – not legislation that checks a box but fails to deliver. As written, this bill not only misses the mark, it risks doing more harm than good.”
Uber has pulled out of other states in response to similar legislation, and Krouse thinks this time will not be any different.
“I think they will pull out. I don’t think that’s a bluff,” he said.
Wilford says it’s disappointing to hear Uber’s response to the legislation.
“We spent months negotiating with them on taking their concerns, rewriting the legislation, and they completely blindsided us,” she said. “That to me is really disappointing because when you are working with human beings and you’re transporting human beings, you shouldn’t be treating human beings like business decisions.
While Krouse worries about what this could mean for people’s access to rides and the thousands of people who work for Uber in the state, people like Wilford believe other services will step up and adopt these changes.
“They may not love at the end of the day, but they understand and it’s workable,” said Wilford.
While Lyft has not said they would cease operations in Colorado, they did release a statement saying they also have some concerns with the legislation:
“We believe there is a compromise that can be reached that would be beneficial for both riders and drivers, but there are still several aspects of the bill that would make implementation extremely problematic. At the very least, it would have a drastic, negative impact on those who use the platform in a way that does not help achieve the goal of the legislation. We encourage Senate officials to collaborate with us on a bill that addresses these realities and avoids the unintended consequences the current version creates.”
The bill is currently moving through the legislature, and is expected to be heard before the Senate this week before heading back to the House.
