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Car ride with antigay Uber driver leaves him ‘fearing for his safety’

Car ride with antigay Uber driver leaves him ‘fearing for his safety’

“I just sat in silence as he continued to spurt his verbal abuse.”

So says Lewis Peters, a self-described “avid rider of Uber cars,” who shares his harrowing story with Gay Star News.

The 26-year-old Londoner alleges that a recent ride with a staunchly homophobic driver left him “shocked” and fearing for his safety.

“I had taken an Uber from a work event to Clapham in South London to have a few drinks with my close friends,” he writes, “when in conversation, I asked the driver what his craziest Uber ride was.”

The journalist often asks this question during Uber rides to get some juicy tales along with his ride, but “the response completely threw me.”

This driver’s craziest ride involved “two guys in the back of my car, kissing,” which was “disgusting and vile,” and “not normal.”

“Immediately I felt unsafe. It’s not that I expected him to physically attack me. But I was alone in a car with a homophobe. I started calculating if he realized I was gay and reckoned not.”

Peters told the driver that he has gay friends and “respected their way of life,” but choked when it came to saying he was gay himself. The man’s homophobia “had pushed” him back into the closet for the duration of the ride, which made him “uncomfortable” and “angry.”

But, when he got out of the car, he slammed the door and turned to the driver, saying, “You just had a ride with a gay guy…”

After Peters complained, Uber apologized for the experience and emphasized that the company has a strict anti-discrimination policy.

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