Living in Pakistan, we all are well aware of the fact that how unsafe public transport is for girls. However, since Careem and Uber hit K-Town, everyone, especially girls, were finally thankful and happy that traveling became much safer. With time, we all became used to their services and no more hassle of waiting for our dads to pick up from our universities or friend’s place.

However, there are good days but then there are bad days too. We started to come across incidents that were reported by girls, where the drivers turned out to be either creeps or weirdos. Recently, we came across an incident reported by two girls in Lahore while traveling in Uber.

Here’s what happened:

After a long day me and my friend decided to take an Uber for a change from packages to Valencia society. Usually we opt for Careem (which we think is a lot safer) but due to no vehicles available we booked an Uber.

The driver failed to show up at the pin location and that where all the horrible things started. After communicating with the captain we patiently where exactly we are our journey started, it took us about 5-6 mins.

My friend asked him to turn on the AC as it was too hot outside to which he rudely replied,

“Ac nahi hai, aisay hi bethna hai tou betho”.

I asked my friend to ignore him as we were already getting late. The ride started and my friend started to talk to me about how the driver should’ve told us earlier that there is no AC in the car. He abruptly stopped the car in the middle of the road and asked us to leave roughly 2 mins after the ride had started.

“120 Rs ki ride ka yeh matlab nahi hai k tumny gaari khareed li hai”.

To which I replied very calmly that he is providing us a service and should’ve been clear about the ac situation as we communicated on the phone earlier so we could’ve booked another ride instead but after all this point we will have to pay extra money.

We stayed calm throughout the ride but his rash driving, close calls with the other cars and the creepy aggressive stares were constant. We managed to get home safe and during this ride we even filed a complaint but the response of Uber was delayed and we felt unsafe the whole time.

This is scary, especially the way he was replying and then those aggressive stares. It is really shocking that the response to the complaint was delayed by the company. Why are such cases taken so lightly by the company as well as the government? There are thousands of girls who travel everyday using these services and have to face such harassment from creepy drivers. It is important that these companies provide education to these drivers so that they learn to respect their customers; especially girls and women.

Let us know in the comments below, what do you think about this?