Lyft Says Thousands of People Were Sexually Assaulted on Rides Over Three Years

Two years after Uber released a report into safety failures on its rides, rival Lyft has finally released its own—and it makes for extremely grim reading. According to the Washington Post, Lyft confirmed 4,158 sexual assaults on its rides between 2017 and 2019. The report was released three years after Lyft first promised to share its safety data. “While safety incidents on our platform are incredibly rare, we realize that even one is too many,” wrote head of policy development and research, Jennifer Brandenburger. “The type of safety incidents detailed in this report occurred on 0.0002 percent of rides, and well over 99 percent of all rides occur without any safety report at all.” The data showed 1,807 sexual assaults on Lyft rides in 2019, the most recent year in the report. Rachel Abrams, a lawyer who represents hundreds of victims in lawsuits against cab-hailing apps, said: “We’ve all been waiting for it... They are not implementing the safety measures to prevent this from happening, and it’s just going to keep mounting.”