After a near-decade of existence, Lyft has only just released its first annual ‘Community Safety Report.’ Released just this past week, the 16-page document includes the company’s approach to handling safety incidents, their approach to documenting incidents, and most significant, the number of safety incidents themselves. For comparison, Uber released their first safety report in 2019.
The report only provides data of Lyft-involved motor vehicle fatalities, fatal physical assaults, and sexual assaults from 2017 to 2019. From this data set, Lyft provides a determination that during those three years, “over 99% of trips occurred without any reported safety incident.” A total of 105 reported motor vehicle fatalities and only 10 fatal physical assaults were reported.
However, it’s Lyft’s data on sexual assaults that is especially striking in comparison to the other safety incidents. Lyft’s collected data on reported sexual assaults occurring during a trip are categorized as “non-consensual penetration,” “attempted non-consensual penetration,” “non-consensual kissing or touching of a sexual body part” and “non-consensual kissing of a non sexual body part.”
In 2017, 1096 sexual assaults were reported. In 2018, 1255 sexual assaults and in 2019, 1807 sexual assaults. Over three years, over 4,100 sexual assaults were reported.
Among Lyft’s 5 categorizations of sexual assault, the most commonly occurring across the three-year range was “non-consensual touching of a sexual body part,” followed by “non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part.” Lyft did not provide any other data regarding sexual assaults.
What’s making headlines aren’t just the shocking numbers of Lyft passengers reporting sexual assaults, it’s also how the company has reacted to these reports. The release of this report comes after years of Lyft (and Uber) facing legal and social reckonings for failing to properly address the rampant number of sexual assaults occurring on company time. Although sexual assaults were being reported long prior, 2019 marks the beginning of a significant barrage of lawsuits against the company, still ongoing to this day.
In 2017, Alison Turkos was kidnapped and raped by a Lyft driver. When reporting her assault, she said, “Lyft’s response was so blasé and callous and robotic.” In 2019, 19 women collectively filed suit against Lyft for “failing to enact basic safety measures that would have prevented the alleged assaults”.
?Yesterday @lyft released their first-ever "safety report", but in reality, it's a harm report, b/c they are reporting on the harm they have caused. Do not applaud Lyft for this, it's survivors like myself who made this happen and held them accountable.https://t.co/HrdoNSoFBM
— Alison Turkos (@alisonturkos) October 22, 2021
In 2020, a California judge agreed that given the sheer number of concurrently filed sexual assault cases against Lyft (at the time), multiple cases would be consolidated within one trial. All claims involved in the consolidated case alleged that Lyft “did not adequately address the issue of sexual misconduct committed by sexual predators who drove for the ride-sharing company.”
As of 2021, the company is currently facing 72 lawsuits of allegations of sexual assault and rape. Attorney Laurel Simes, who has represented over 400 assault clients, describes the company as “not cooperative.” Also, this year, a California law firm made headlines for representing 1000 clients suing Uber or Lyft for sexual assault.
Lyft’s safety report promotes their safety procedures, including background checks on all drivers, continuous monitoring of criminal records, and safety features on the app like sharing location or emergency help. However, victims and attorneys allege Lyft’s safety mechanisms are insufficient to protect riders. In combination with the company’s lack of appropriate responses to reports of sexual assault, claims that the company “is fostering a sexual assault epidemic” are unsurprising.
Despite the massive onslaught of legal battles and resulting social infamy, Lyft remains the #2 ride-sharing application in the United States, with $2.4 billion in revenue in the fiscal year 2002.
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