Uber's tumultuous ups and downs in 2014 (pictures)

On New Year’s Eve 2014, an Uber driver allegedly hit and killed 6-year-old Sophia Liu in San Francisco as she walked with herfamily in a crosswalk. The driver was not carrying a passenger during theaccident, so he wasn't covered by Uber's insurance policy. Uber later extended its insurance coverage to account for the times when drivers are in betweenrides.

Meanwhile, the girl's family sued Uberfor wrongful death. Uber claims the driver was off duty at the time of theincident but the family’s lawyer alleges the driver was distracted by his Ubersmartphone app, which accounted for the accident.

"The last thing I saw before the Uberdriver killed my little girl, and forever changed my life, was him looking downat his phone," Huan Kuang, the girl's mother, said in a statement inDecember. "The driver is a man who was working to feed his family and hedid wrong, but Uber is the one who makes the drivers look at their phones as partof the way they do business."

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon charged the driver with vehicular manslaughter in December.

Uber kicked off January running its service in about 60cities. By the end of the year it had expanded to more than 250 cities in 50 countries, including China, South Africa and Indonesia.

Drivers for the ride-sharing service currently give about 800,000rides per week and roughly 7,000 new passengers sign-up for the service everymonth, according to data from car insurance comparison engine The Zebra.

“We are six times bigger today than 12 months ago -- and grew faster thisyear than last,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in a blog post in December. He wentonto say that this growth is just the beginning and “it is in the coming yearsthat Uber truly scales and the impact in cities becomes visible.”

Uber was the target of growing driver protests in 2014. In cities, such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, unhappydrivers repeatedly gathered in front of Uber offices to criticize the companyfor raising fees for its service in some cities and maintaining price cuts inothers. Another common complaint among drivers was that the app doesn’t allow fortipping.

Uber claims drivers can make up to$90,000 per year, but most drivers say they make far less. The average yearlypay for a full-time Uber driver is $39,000, according to data from TheZebra.

Since Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors, rather thanemployees, they are tasked with paying their own vehicle maintenance, insuranceand gas. And because Uber drivers aren’t employees, Uber doesn’t have to pay for their workers' compensation, unemployment andhealth insurance.

Uber passengers have always rated their drivers, but itwasn’t until 2014 that it was revealed drivers also keep a scorecard oncustomers.

The idea of passenger ratings is tohelp drivers share information about passengers and make the service as safeand respectful as possible. But, to some passengers’ annoyance, Uber keepsthose ratings secret.

In July, a 19-year-old techie namedAaron Landy hacked into Uber’s system and figured out a way people could gettheir rider scores. The hack was hugely popular among users but was shut downby Uber within hours.

With Uber’s rapid expansion in 2014 came dozens of clasheswith regulators worldwide. Not only did the ride-sharing service face-off with officialsin Germany, France, the Netherlands, India, Thailand, the UK, Spain and China -- toname a few -- it was also served with lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters inthe US.

From Pennsylvania to Virginia to Nevada, local lawmakersspoke out against the ride-sharing service saying there needed to be tighterregulations on things like insurance, car inspections and driver backgroundchecks. The crux of the officials’ concerns tended to center on  safety.

In December, Uber was hit with two lawsuits -- one from thecity of Portland, Ore., and the other from California. The California suit allegesUber misleads its customers about its business and safetypractices. In Oregon, regulators want the company to comply with local permitting rules.

Uber has long clashed with ride-sharingrival Lyft, but this year things got dirty. Uber was caught conductingan extensive secret campaign designed to recruit Lyft drivers, whose cars are distinguished by a fuzzy pink mustache.

Technology news site The Verge published a lengthy report inAugust detailing Uber’s national marketing program -- dubbed Operation SLOG. Reportedly,the idea was to hire independent contractors and ply them with burner phones,credit cards for creating dummy accounts and talking points to surreptitiouslylure Lyft drivers to Uber's platform. For ride-sharing companies, more drivers meanmore passengers, and ultimately, more money.

Once Operation SLOG was revealed, Uber didn’t deny being the architect of thesecretive campaign. It did say in an August blog post that there was a lot of “misinformation” about its tactics, but it’s “always working hard to recruit new drivers onto the platform.”

In a tragic incident in San Franciscoin September, an Uber driver allegedly became agitated with his passengers and struck one of them in the face with a claw hammer. The victim was leftbleeding, drifting in and out of consciousness and with severe damage to hisleft eye.

In the wake of the alleged assault, Uber’s terms and conditions came under scrutiny -- calling into question what exactlypassengers agree to when they take an Uber ride. The company clearly states inits terms and conditions that it's not responsible for drivers’ actions.

“You acknowledge that you may beexposed to situations involving third party providers that are potentiallyunsafe, offensive, harmful to minors, or otherwise objectionable,” Uber’s terms and conditionsread. “Using the services is at your own risk and judgment.”

Though the vast majority of Uberdrivers are safe, several other incidents occurred in 2014 drawing attention tothe safety of the ride-sharing service, including more than a dozen allegationsof sexual assault and groping, kidnapping and physical assault, according to variousmedia reports.

At a private dinner in late November,Uber’s senior vice president of business Emil Michael told a BuzzFeed reporterthat he’d like to spend $1 million to hire a team of “oppositional researchers”to "dig up dirt” on Uber’s critics in the media. At the same time, anotherBuzzFeed journalist reported that Uber's New York generalmanager used the company’s geo-location data to track her without her knowledge.

Hence, a massive media storm hit.During that week, Uber made news headlines 1,222 times, according to data from Trendkite.Some critics questioned why the executives weren’t fired -- wondering if theirconduct reflected the company's corporate culture. Hashtags like #Ubergate and #deleteUber trended on social networks and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick with a list of his privacy concerns.

Shortly after the incident, Kalanickposted a stream of tweets to Twitter saying Michael showed a "lack ofleadership," his remarks were a "departure from our values andideals," and "folks who make mistakes can learn from them."

After a 26-year-old woman reported being raped and beaten by her Uber driver in Delhi, India, in December, the ride-sharingservice was banned from the country’s capital. Just a couple of weeks later, a young woman in Boston, alleged she was choked and raped by her Uber driver.

The alleged perpetrators in both cases were quicklyarrested and Uber called the alleged crimes "despicable." In the India case, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said, “We willdo everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justiceand to support the victim and her family in her recovery."

These alleged rapes weren't the first for Uber drivers. Various media reports of rape, sexual harassment and groping surfaced in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Ill., Orlando, Fla. and other cities in the past year.

Uber says it conducts stringent and rigorous background checks on itsdrivers, but these incidents broughta critical eye on such checks. The company’s driver screenings are donecompletely online. Some safety experts say in-person interviews or training withwould-be drivers could help weed out potential criminals.

Uber became the highest valued venture-backed company in theworld in 2014 -- blowing all other companies out of the water. With severalhefty rounds of financing, the company has raised a total of more than $2.7 billion --giving it a valuation of at least $41.2 billion. Of that funding, more than $2.4 billion came in 2014.

Uber’s closest rivals in the VC-fundedarena are Airbnb, Xiaomi, Dropbox and Snapchat -- all of which are valued atabout $10 billion each.

In announcing one of the company’s newestinjections of financing in December, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick took a look-back at 2014 and the ride-sharing service’s “significant growing pains.”

"Acknowledging mistakes and learning from themare the first steps," Kalanick wrote in a blog post. The ride-sharingservice will work toward "new standards in data privacy," give backmore in cities where it operates and work toward refining its corporateculture. "Done right," he wrote, "it will lead to a smarter andmore humble company."