Lyft Sexual Assault Lawsuit Alleges Problems With Predatory Drivers Were Known for Years

Rideshare service refused to take steps to add adequate passenger safety measures until it faced a lawsuit from its investors, complaint notes.

A Georgia woman has filed a lawsuit against Lyft, alleging that the company’s lack of adequate safety features allowed a driver to harass her by exposing himself and then forcing her out of the vehicle midway through her trip.

The complaint (PDF) was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on September 18, by a woman identified only with the initials J.S., to protect her privacy. She accuses Lyft Inc. of knowing that it had a problem with sexually predatory drivers, yet indicates that the rideshare company chose to prioritize profits over passenger safety, by doing little to address the issues.

Over the past few years, Lyft and its competitor, Uber, have faced a growing number of rideshare sexual assault lawsuits, outlining similar instances where vulnerable passengers were harassed, groped or even abducted and raped by drivers.

Each claim, including the latest Lyft lawsuit, involves similar allegations, that the rideshare services failed to put more than the bare minimum of safety measures in place to protect passengers. Beyond doing only minimal background checks, former passengers indicate that Lyft and Uber failed to equip vehicles with surveillance cameras, neglected to provide sexual assault or harassment awareness training for drivers, and failed to give passengers the option of selecting the gender of their driver.

Following a complaint by investors that the company’s bottom lines were being hurt by the safety problems, Lyft reached a settlement agreement in July 2024 that included a promise of company-wide reforms and improvements to passenger safety. 

These include a commitment to make passengers better aware of the safety functions already available on the Lyft app, such as a feature to silently alert 911 or a Lyft representative. The company also agreed to assign a member representing driver and user safety to the existing Culture of Ethics and Compliance Committee.

Lyft Sexual Assault Lawsuit

According to J.S.’s lawsuit, she requested a ride home through the Lyft app after finishing a babysitting job in January 2024. However, she indicates that the driver “deliberately exposed his genitals” and then tried to show her sexually explicit videos of himself masturbating. The driver then refused to take her all the way to the ordered destination, dropping her off before getting there.

J.S.’s complaint notes that Lyft often promotes its service as a safe option for young, unaccompanied and intoxicated women who need transportation, without warning them of the risks of driver sexual assaults. In addition, the lawsuit claims Lyft does not report statistics on sexual harassment and assaults by its drivers.

In some instances, women who reported being sexually assaulted by drivers have been reassigned that same driver on future ride requests, the lawsuit notes, alleging that the company has known of these problems for years.

“Lyft collected a fee for the Lyft trip that resulted in the sexual abuse of Plaintiff. By failing to take reasonable steps to confront the problem of multiple rapes and sexual assaults of Lyft passengers by Lyft drivers, Lyft has acted in conscious disregard of the safety of its passengers, including Plaintiff, and has breached its duty of reasonable care and has breached the implied and express covenants arising from its contract with its passengers.”

– J.S. v. Lyft Inc., et al.

She presents claims of negligence, negligent hiring, supervision and retention, common carrier negligence, negligent failure to warn, vicarious liability for sexual assault, vicarious liability/liability for the torts of Lyft’s drivers, intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, negligent infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, strict product liability-based design defect, and strict liability failure to warn. J.S. seeks both compensatory and punitive damage.

Uber Passenger Sexual Assault Lawsuits

Lyft’s competitor faces far more Uber passenger sexual assault lawsuits, with most filed in federal courts. These cases have been centralized into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of California, where U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer is overseeing coordinated discovery and preparing a group of representative cases for early bellwether trials.

Hundreds of similar claims have also been filed in California state court, where the first Uber sexual assault lawsuit went to trial on September 8, and is still underway.

The trial, which is expected to last through the rest of the month, involves claims brought by a woman identified only as Jessica C., who says she was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver while traveling home for the holidays from college in December 2019. The incident traumatized her, leading to a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the complaint.

The first federal trial is currently scheduled to begin on January 7, 2026. Both the state and federal bellwether trials are designed to see how live juries will respond to evidence and testimony that could be repeated in thousands of individual trials.

While the outcomes of these bellwether trials are not binding on other claims, they could help the parties reach a global agreement to settle thousands of Uber driver sexual assault lawsuits, preventing the need for the cases to be remanded back to their originating districts for individual trial dates.

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