More than 1,800 sexual assaults occurred during Lyft rides in 2019, the company said on Thursday in its first-ever safety report on sexual and physical assaults, fatal crashes and other serious incidents.Lyft’s safety report had been long awaited in the ride-hailing industry, as the company is facing lawsuits from victims of sexual assaults that occurred during rides. It committed to releasing its sexual assault statistics in 2019, when Uber released a similar report.“While safety incidents on our platform are incredibly rare, we realize that even one is too many,” Lyft’s head of policy development and research, Jennifer Brandenburger, said in a blog post on Thursday. “Behind every report is a real person and real experience.”The 1,807 sexual assaults during Lyft rides in 2019, the most recent year for data in the report, were a 64 percent increase from 2017, the company said. But because the number of rides rose even faster, safety improved overall, Lyft said, with the incident r …
