They thought he was an Uber driver until he drove down a dirt road
When you’re vacationing at a popular South Carolina beach, the last thing on your mind is escaping and fighting for your life.
Hilton Head, South Carolina, a low country resort town that tourists flock to for their year round warm temperatures, was met with near tragedy when a group a friends ordered an Uber outside of a popular restaurant.
A man in a dark SUV pulled up and the three women thought they saw an UBER sign in the windshield so they got in. Their vacation home was south of the island but didn’t notice that the driver was actually going north. When the driver went down an unfamiliar dirt road is when they realized that something had gone terribly wrong.
When the front seat passenger told the driver that she was going to call 9-1-1, he then grabbed the phone from her hand the stopped the SUV. The three escaped the vehicle and the driver got out of the vehicle to chase after them but when the woman began dialing 9-1-1 he quickly ran back to his SUV and sped away. Police arrived only a few minutes after.
Police haven’t located or identified the driver. They are uncertain if he is a legitimate driver for UBER or another transportation company.
This spring, less than a month after the death of a South Carolina college student who got into a vehicle that she thought was her Uber, the South Carolina State House passed a bill that will require ride-share vehicles in the state to display illuminated signs so passengers can easily recognize their drivers’ cars.
Uber wants to remind riders that there are safety settings to crack down on fake drivers. Uber will send push alerts that remind riders to look at the license plate number, car make and model, and compare the name and photo of driver to who shows up, before getting into a vehicle. For these safety settings to work, you must enable push notifications.
Source: CNN
