Lyft Received More Than 4,000 Reports of Sexual Assaults on Ride Shares from 2017-19 – Times of San Diego

Lyft Inc. received reports of more than 4,000 instances of sexual assault on its ride-hailing platform between 2017 and 2019, the company said.

Officials detailed the data in a safety report that had been promised about two years ago.

Lyft’s report, issued late Thursday, showed sexual assault reports on its platform increased from around 1,100 in 2017 to 1,800 in 2019.

Bookings increased at a higher rate during that time, though, resulting in a 19% drop in the overall incident rate.

Lyft said more than 99% of its rides occurred without any safety incidents.

“While safety incidents on our platform are incredibly rare, we realize that even one is too many. Behind every report is a real person and real experience, and our goal is to make each Lyft ride as safe as we possibly can,” Jennifer Brandenburger, head of policy development and research, said in a company blog post.

The company said it has invested in safety features, employed rigorous driver background checks and consulted sexual assault experts.

Lyft had committed to releasing its report at the end of 2019, when its larger rival Uber Technologies Inc. provided the ride-hailing industry’s first detailed safety report.

Uber at the time disclosed it had received some 6,000 reports of sexual assault out of 2.3 billion trips in the U.S. in 2017 and 2018.

Lyft, which completes significantly fewer trips than Uber, did not disclose the total number of completed rides in its Thursday safety report, but at 0.0002% the incident rate was the same as Uber’s.

Lyft did not disclose what share of incidents resulted in drivers being harmed. Uber’s report showed riders accounted for roughly half of the accused in sexual assault reports.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon, editing by Howard Goller)

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