What Happens To Uber Drivers And Other Sharing Economy Workers Injured On The Job?

Ellen Huet
Forbes Staff

Omar, a 32-year-old Uber driver, was working a typical late-night shift in Los Angeles last month when his ride veered from pleasant to violent in just a few minutes. When he pulled his SUV full of passengers up to the Hollywood Tower apartments around 2:30 a.m., two of the riders refused to leave his car. An argument broke out, and Omar said one of the passengers hit him with a shiny object, broke his jaw in two places and landed him in the hospital for a week.

Omar’s not the only worker to find that a newfangled job like driving for Uber comes with some very old dangers: on-the-job injuries. On Sunday, an off-duty Boston cop assaulted his Uber driver, yelled racial slurs at him and stole his car. In Los Angeles, people stabbed an Uber driver in the face and neck in November and choked another driver on New Year’s Day, though in both cases the attacker was likely not the passenger Uber assigned the driver. A San Francisco passenger attacked his Uber driver in November, landing him in the hospital with facial injuries. A Lyft passenger punched his driver and broke his nose in May. And it’s not just headline-grabbing assaults — if any Homejoy cleaner falls while mopping or any Instacart shopper throws out their back while carrying groceries, they’re in the same boat.

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Continua qui: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/01/06/workers-compensation-uber-drivers-sharing-economy/