Gruesome murder of a Mexican teenager is exposing the risks of ride-sharing apps

To summarize the entire article in one sentence: "Ride sharing is risky, but we decline to evaluate whether it's more or less risky than cabs."

This article misses an opportunity to explore the crime rate in Mexican cabs with the crime rate in Mexican ride-shares, and instead beats the same dead horse as every other "scary ride sharing headline to get people to click for ad revenue" writeup over the past few years.

Bad things happen. If you don't present how likely they are to happen — relative to a contextually appropriate baseline figure — when you report about them, you're just using scare tactics to drum up views to pay your bills.

"Uber rider is hit by lightning. Are ride-shares safe?" is an example of how NOT to report a lightning strike of a rideshare passenger, yet I guarantee you that's what every crappy press agency in the world will lead with given the chance.

"Passenger in car-for-hire hit by lightning." is much more accurate, contains no less relevant information — lightning doesn't care if it's Uber or Lyft or a Taxi — and is vastly less interesting for people to click on.

Don't get suckered in by these articles.