1,807 sexual assaults occurred in Lyft rides in 2019

October 25, 2021

Lyft has released the company’s first-ever safety report, which includes data about three categories of safety incidents reported on the platform in the United States, from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019: motor fatalities, fatal physical assaults and five subcategories of sexual assault.

The company committed to releasing its safety report in 2019 when ride-hailing company Uber released a similar report. In a blog post, Lyft’s head of policy development and research, Jennifer Brandenburger, said, 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.”

There were 1,807 sexual assaults in 2019, 1,255 in 2018, and 1,096 in 2017. There were 22 motor vehicle fatalities reported in 2019, 34 in 2018 and 49 in 2019. From 2017-2019, there were 10 reports of fatal physical assaults.

“Safety incidents on Lyft are statistically very rare. The type of safety incidents detailed in this report occurred on 0.0002% of rides, and well over 99% of all rides occur without any safety report at all,” Brandenburger said. “These rates are in line with, and in some categories better than, what has been reported by Uber, showing that overall, the prevalence of reported safety incidents across the rideshare industry is very low. The incident rate of sexual assault categories included in this report decreased by 19% during this time period.”

In late 2019, Lyft formed a Safety Advisory Council, which provides Lyft with critical, expert external perspectives to identify additional opportunities to enhance safety, work through complex safety decisions and anticipate any unintended consequences of feature or policy changes. To date, Lyft said it had consulted the Council on background check process, community safety education, ride verification technology, incident response process, integration with ADT and training for Safety team members.

“We will never stop working to make Lyft the safest platform for our community, and we will continue to consult with experts, collaborate with industry-leading partners and develop safety tools based on insights from riders and drivers. Just as importantly, we are committed to listening to our community every step of the way,” Lyft said.

Maria Henriquez joined Security Magazine in 2019 as its Associate Editor. Since then, she has been covering the security industry and reporting on issues affecting enterprise security leaders, to include cybersecurity, leadership and management, risk and resilience and pressing security challenges facing the industry. Within her role at Security, she works to produce several Special Reports and other stories for the monthly eMagazine, Newswire articles, Web Exclusive features, as well as manage social media, the 5 minutes with series, and the Today’s Cybersecurity Leader and Security enewsletter. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing.

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