Blind woman receives apology from Uber after drop-off at wrong location

By Shaun Gallagher

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    RALEIGH, North Carolina (WRAL) — A Raleigh woman, her attorney and her family demanded a public apology Tuesday from Uber after the woman, who is blind, was dropped off at the wrong location and abandoned by her rideshare driver.

In May, Kamille Richardson was trying to go to a Verizon store on Mercantile Drive in Raleigh, off Wake Forest Road, to get a new phone. Instead, she was left at an apartment complex more than a mile north of the store. Richardson said she told the Uber driver she wasn’t in the right place, but he “took off.” She said he told her that he had to pick somebody up at the airport.

She wants to make sure that driver can’t strand another person and is asking that he no longer be allowed to drive for Uber.

Aviance Brown, Richardson’s attorney, said she has reached out to Uber over the last two months but has not received a response. On Tuesday, Uber provided this response to WRAL News:

“We apologize for Ms. Richardson’s stressful experience. We have investigated this issue, which appears to have been a result of a map error that directed the driver to an incorrect drop off location, and have addressed the map issue. Our goal is to create a platform that supports people’s ability to easily move around their communities, and we’re committed to building features, and working with experts to make the Uber platform more accessible.”

During Tuesday’s news conference, Brown said Richardson “questioned this driver on more than one occasion if he was sure that this was in fact Verizon, [and] he reassured her multiple times that she was at Verizon. He guided her to a random apartment door, knocked on it and proceeded to take off running.”

Richardson, the owner of a consulting firm that trains businesses and corporations in inclusive practices, said her firm will push Uber for sensitivity training and to create new technological safeguards to prevent other incidents.

“That is one of the scariest things I’ve ever been through,” she told WRAL News in May. “How could you just abandon somebody like that knowing good and well that I was not in the right spot?”

Richardson, who said she has always felt independent despite her blindness, said it was the first time in her life she’s felt so helpless.

Richardson, who has been blind since birth, said ridesharing apps like Uber are as close as she can get to feeling like she has her own car.

“I have always been a very independent traveler,” she said. “I’ve always lived on my own. I’ve just been one who always gets things done as independently as possible with very little assistance.”

WRAL News reached out to the state Department of Health and Human Services’ division of services for the blind. A spokesperson said Uber has been in contact with the state and a meeting is planned to discuss strategies to better serve North Carolina residents.

In a letter to Uber’s head of public policy, accessibility and underserved communities, DHSS representatives wrote: “It is our hope and expectation that Uber will be taking appropriate actions to address this matter to ensure that it never happens to another person.”

Richardson, who calls the moment “terrifying,” said the ride will have a lingering impact on her ability to feel independent.

“The ability to be able to move through this world freely, it’s just something I’ve always cherished and relished,” she said. “Ever since this happened, I’ve always now been hesitant. It took me a month [after the incident] to travel using any rideshare service alone. I refuse to go by myself. And that’s never been me … but I just lost trust in the whole situation.”

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