Uber and sexual assault — 2 stories raise the question: How vigilant and self-defensive is a woman supposed to be?

1. You may have heard about the Dallas County District Attorney Jody Warner who got fired after an Uber driver posted a recording of her berating him after he stopped his car and demanded that she get out. The driver, Shaun Platt, explained afterward:

“We get to a stretch in the road where the navigation says continue for several blocks. She says 'no, make a right here.' I said 'I’m required by Uber to follow the GPS.' She said 'no, make a right here' and she became kinda belligerent.... She kept calling me stupid. She said this was the only job I can get because I’m so stupid. And that I was a retard. She hit me on my shoulder. That was the final straw. I’m used to dealing with drunk passengers on different levels of intoxication. I pulled over immediately. I said, 'ma’am you need to exit my vehicle.' She said 'you’re supposed to take me home.' I said 'I understand that but you just crossed the line."

The recording makes Warner look horrible, but she's inviting us to see her subjective perspective in "a situation that made me feel very uncomfortable and I became defensive and eventually angry." She says:

"I'm not trying to make any accusations against that driver, I don't know what's in his heart... Whether it's because of my experience as a prosecutor, maybe [I'm] hyper-vigilant, but whether I was justifiably uncomfortable, I can't tell you that... all I can tell you is what's in my heart."

His heart, her heart, what is she trying to say?

She says she felt uncomfortable with the route the driver was taking and went into "fight or flight" mode, saying her years of prosecuting sexual assault cases may have put her on edge or more sensitive than most.

So, she's a woman, alone in a car with a man, and she's vulnerable, because she's intoxicated and needs to trust him to get her home, and he takes what she now claims looks like the wrong route — though it was apparently just the GPS route Uber requires him to take — and she goes all authoritarian on him, yelling at him, ordering him to do things and attaching shocking epithets and accusations.

2. Meanwhile, "2 women sue Uber, alleging sexual assault by drivers" (NY Post). This is a class action in federal court, accusing Uber of failing to do adequate background checks and monitoring.

The lawsuit... alleges that Uber markets to young women traveling alone and puts profits over their safety.... It asks the court for unspecified damages to compensate the women, and also seeks court-ordered safety measures including fingerprint background checks for drivers and a panic button on the Uber app that would alert the company and authorities to safety problems....

There is a perception that a woman needs to be vigilant about the potential for a sexual attack from an Uber driver, and the lawsuit is an effort to make Uber provide the vigilance. But Uber oversees billions of rides. The incidence of attacks is probably already quite low. Maybe Uber should do more. Should the app have a panic button? The rider has a phone and could call 911, but there are situations when you're just wary — perhaps like Jody Warner — and you think the driver is deviating from the norm and maybe he's not.

You know, we're talking a lot these days about how much a woman should react on the spot when something starts going wrong. The Jody Warner case may explain why sometimes these women report that they felt "paralyzed" or unable to speak up. Look at the horrible consequences for Warner of opting for fight mode.