Lyft has disclosed that it received more than 4,000 reports of sexual assault during rides between 2017 and 2019, including 1,807 in 2019 alone. The long-awaited report, promised by the company in 2019, reveals a rise in incidents from 1,096 in 2017 to 1,255 in 2018.
More than half of the 2019 incidents involved non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, while 156 reports were of non-consensual sexual penetration. The report also listed ten fatal assaults over the three-year period, including four in 2019.
Ride-hailing companies have faced growing scrutiny over safety, particularly sexual assaults. Lyft's report comes nearly two years after Uber released a similar report showing over 3,000 sexual assaults in the US in 2018. Victims and lawmakers have pressured these platforms to improve safety measures.
Alison Turkos, who sued Lyft alleging her driver sexually assaulted her in 2017, said the report followed years of pressure from survivors. She described rideshare sexual assault as a systemic problem that Lyft chooses to ignore. Lyft has been sued by multiple women for failing to implement basic safety measures.
Lyft stated it screens all drivers with initial and annual background checks and monitors criminal and driving records. The company noted that the rate of sexual assaults as a percentage of rides decreased by 19% over the three-year period, and over 99% of rides occurred without any reported safety incident.
