I’m Suing Lyft | Hacker News Reader

I’m Suing Lyft

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113 pointsjbegley64 comments

> Lyft’s failure to properly investigate the failues of their system that lead to my kidnapping and rape has severely hampered the ongoing criminal investigation.

Does anyone know more about this story? Except this line that is not further elaborated, the post says nothing of why the police were ineffective. And as a matter of principle, shouldn't Lyft be compelled with warrants/subpoenas to provide any records required by the investigation? I certainly don't want to rely on the benevolence of corporations for criminal investigations. So I'd classify this story as a failure of the police first, and Lyft only second.

Here's some more backstory on the police aspect: https://www.thedailybeast.com/assault-victims-sue-nypd-over-...

So yes, apparently/allegedly, the police did fail, and the FBI is (apparently?) looking into the claims.

Reading the plaintiff's complaint, it says that she took a Lyft home. She did not know that anything bad happened on the trip until she looked at her account and noticed that what should have been a 3 mile trip had been an 18 mile trip.

She also noticed vaginal pain and bleeding, realized that something bad must have happened during that trip, and went to the police to report kidnapping and rape. A rape kit was administered and the results identified semen of at least two men.

Then:

> 42. The NYPD opened an investigation. As part of that investigation, ALISON was asked to ride along in the back of a police car and retrace the route that was taken the night of her attack in an effort to help her recover a more detailed memory of what happened to her that fateful night.

> 43. As she rode in the back of the police car the night of the reenactment, the horrible memories she had blocked from her mind came flooding back and she remembered the terrifying details of how she was held at gunpoint by the driver, taken across state lines and repeatedly raped in the back of the car by at least two other men.

That kind of reenactment has a very high risk of causing false memories. Is NYPD aware of that, and do they take proper steps to avoid it, or did they make plaintiffs case a lot harder right there?

This might not tank a civil case, where you only need a preponderance of the evidence, but sounds like something that could make a criminal case hopeless since that requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I wonder if that has anything to do with the apparent lack of progress of the criminal investigation?

Police departments really really need to have experts in human memory on hand, and require that those experts be present when investigators do anything that involves the memory of victims, suspects, and witnesses.

So they have a rape kit and they know who the driver was, can't they at least see if the DNA matches?

Also if the driver took a very different route to what she requested on her phone that alone seems suspicious.

Gotta be enough to subpoena the driver's phone's location or get some footage along the route.

I have a lot of empathy for what happened to this person. It’s something that obviously nobody should have to go through.

But I also have a hard time defining what the ideal would look like here. If Lyft were to immediately act on any accusation of wrongdoing, the 0.001% of bad actors would be prevented from acting badly once again. But we’d also be living in a world where a customer complaint instantly means the loss of income for someone who is likely barely scraping by and supposed to be innocent until they are proven guilty.

The problem is that once everyone knows that that is how the deck is stacked, the 99.999% of drivers who never act badly are in an even more vulnerable position and at the whims of their customers.

I’m not saying I disagree that Lyft acted poorly here or that I don’t believe the victim. I am saying I don’t see a clear path to fixing this. It seems like a really short sighted move by Lyft and I have to wonder if it’s maybe because it’s nearly impossible for them to sort true from false amongst all of the reports they receive in a given day, especially without the help of a police report.

Really??

A phone call to gather facts vs. a generic email would be a good start, given the seriousness of the situation.

Not forcing her to pay for her ride seems like common decency, even at the minor risk of some fraud. It seems that with GPS they should be able to tell she wasn't delivered to her original destination and instead was moved across state lines.

Immediate removal of the driver following an official police complaint would be the next obvious step, followed by more personal follow-up, and a cash settlement offer.

Other articles have pointed out that she hadn't immediately reported the rape to Lyft. The medium article makes it sound like Lyft were completely indifferent to the kidnapping and rape, but the related articles seem to agree that the first contact Lyft had was a complaint regarding her charge. Lyft themselves claim that the police had not given them a subpoena for information until six months after the incident had taken place. I'm very sympathetic towards Ms Turkos and feel for what she's been through, but the way this article is written is very disingenuous.

I'm seriously all for women's and victim's rights (I'm a woman btw). Something seems off here. She is suing Lyft, ok. NO WHERE that I can see, does she demand that her rapists be prosecuted and be sentenced for their crime. Her focus is only on suing Lyft. If I was raped, I would be demanding that my rapists be charged and sent to prison, not only for closure for myself, the security of knowing they are off the street and I'm not in danger anymore, but also knowing they won't be able to do this to another woman! Instead it's all about Lyft not taking her complaint seriously and being insensitive. It appears she didn't even tell them what happened right away. Am I missing something?

An “ideal” solution doesn’t really exist. Lyft is never going to be in a position to adjudicate these cases in a substantive way.

Nevertheless, they have no choice but to find a balance between the concerns of their customers, the rights of their drivers and their own business concerns. Completely ignoring the concerns and safety of their customers is probably not the right balance.

[edit: hit something by accident to post too early, still writing...]

They probably need something like:

- triage all customer complaints very quickly to establish the level of seriousness of the complaint. They might be something like: [4] - poor service (late, slow, dirty car, unnecessary stops); [3] - breach of professional behavior (like asking out a customer) [2] - incidental danger like speeding; [1] - allegations of serious crimes. This is off the top of my head. I’m sure a much better set could be generated.

- take immediate action on [1] - [3], based on the nature of the allegation. For [1] it might be immediate suspension because customer safety trumps the driver’s needs. Though the company could provide a kind of insurance that pays drivers while suspended but before a determination is made. That’s a balance that puts customers safety first, drivers second and company revenue third (assuming they are paying for the insurance). [2] and [3] would have lessor consequences.

- a determination is made on all allegations, where the driver could be fired, continue driving, be temporarily suspended, etc. For [4] that determination might be based on the number and frequency of complaints. [1] might be based on the creation of a police report or some other bar for credibility. In other words for [1], if the customer makes an allegation of a serious crime and follows through with a police report, the driver is fired. That’s could turn out to be unfair in some cases, but remember, no company is going to be in a position to make a determination of truth (think about it: the criminal justice system is a massive and complex system dedicated to this purpose and it’s not exactly great at the job).

Lyft has a GPS with time on the path, with timestamps from both the driver and from the passenger. It would have been extremely easy to do the basic sniff test to see if it does to the pile of "investigate asap, potential big problem" or "unlikely to be the case". I bet they simply did not think of it at the time.

There can be many cases for deviation from the predetermined ideal path. (Eg road closures, request from customer, traffic conditions, driver missed a turn.)

Of course the difference here seems rather large. They should have flagged it anyway. They can even simply automatically check with the customer and the driver too, to ask what happened?

Maybe Lyft/Ubers should have video cams recording footage at all times, I know many drivers already do. It can help protect the driver just as much as the customer.

Police depts that regularly respond to emergencies that result in court cases can't/won't manage cameras, but you expect drivers earning less than minimum wage to be able to do it at their own expense, when probably only 0.000001% of trips result in an incident?

>to be able to do it at their own expense

No, I assumed Lyft/Uber would provide it.

The whole business model of uber/lyft is to exploit loopholes so they wouldn't provide anything lest they be mistaken for an employer.

That would destroy their entire business model.

Bullshit. Lyft has a record of the driver's path that night presumably. They can see he didn't drive to where he was supposed to. At the absolute least, that should be grounds for dismissal even if nothing else occurred.

I'm not that sure, personally I've asked Uber drivers a few times to make a big detour to pick someone up, before continuing to my destination.

Taking a detour doesn't really prove a driver's guilt, although it surely is suspicious.

I truly have empathy for Ms Turkos, but I have trouble diving deeper into both the headline and her steps following the police report.

It's been 2 years since she reported the incident to the police and she's not sharing what they did? How is someone able to continue driving, even continue living outside of prison after a kidnapping?

The alleged customer support is awful, but it's not Lyft's responsibility to imprison, it's the judiciary system's. The fact that she's not including the police's response is fishy. What grounds is she even suing on? My response may seem callous but hopefully, it encourages people to not get baited into the emotions of a tragic event and look deeper into why she is choosing to redact so much information.

> The fact that she's not including the police's response is fishy.

According to another story (https://nypost.com/2019/01/31/nypd-is-an-old-boys-club-thats...):

> But when she reported the rape a few days later, officers were at first “insensitive” about her trauma, then ignored her during the investigation, and finally said her case was “too complex,” according to court papers.

She's now suing the police as well. Which doesn't bring us any closer to understanding what happened, of course!

(It's interesting to note that in her lawsuit against Lyft, which another commenter helpfully linked, https://www.levinsimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Levin-... she seems to describe the police investigation fairly positively, but claims Lyft was "wholly uncooperative", although with no details of what cooperation was requested and refused.)

That poor lady. I hope she really sticks it to Lyft, mainly so companies will learn that providing non-existent or piss poor customer service is expensive.

I can't fathom the fact that they didn't deplatform the driver after a customer reports a sexual assault occurred (even if temporarily while reconciliation with a police report is performed), or that they still charged for the ride.

Right? And I didn't necessarily mean only the complaint stage. I'd consider hiring a potential sex offender, but worse and more realistically, allowing him to stay employed after such a complaint, piss poor customer service, not only to her obviously but every future rider.

It's a little unclear what Lyft's response to the driver actually was. One article ( from heavy.com ) says that "Lyft continued to allow this driver to continue driving for Lyft under a different name", which suggests the possibility that the driver may have been suspended and re-registered under a psuedonym. The implication is that this is fine by Lyft, which is unclear. Please don't take me as being unsympathetic, I certainly am not. Here's some food for thought: If you were falsely accused of a crime of this nature, heaven forbid, your life pretty much depends on you receiving the full due process of the law granted to you by your rights as a citizen. Cases like this can take years of litigation to resolve, which is very unfortunate. This is not because the legal system does not care about women, it's because the legal system cares about the rights of the accused. Unfortunately sometimes this can mean guilty people being able to fall through the cracks, but if you can think of a better system for guaranteeing individual rights we'd all like to know. Until proven guilty you are presumed innocent. Unless remanded to custody, you are free to go about your life in the meantime. If you were fired from your job at the first hint of accusation, the ramifications for you as an individual could be very severe. In this case it sounds like the driver was guilty. However, I'd advise you and many other people to resist the urge for lynchings, kangaroo courts and witch-trials.

I replied to another comment, if you care. They should be able to tell whether or not the driver went 80 miles out of the way. That'd be a great starting point.

Another user commented on paid leave. That sounds like another fantastic option. Or something as simple as pairing the driver with only day time, male riders during the investigation period.

Should any random complaint without evidence be grounds for terminating a driver's source of income? This allows for easy abuse of the system.

Absolutely not. But they have ways to see easily whether or not she was driven 80 miles out of the way. So, if this is true, either she's telling some version of the truth, or they allow drivers and/or riders to just do whatever. If that's the case, it's on them for not having such restrictions in place. That seems like a day one level safety check.

It's important information, yes. But it is paramount to have law enforcement involved which didn't seem to happen until later. That's when they can follow up with the company to gather evidence about what took place.

If someone was accused of murder, would you be so dismissive of the allegation and so worried about abuse?

Which is why the first thing is to go to the police and have them investigate. It's not a private company's job to do this.

"This man murdered someone!"

"Thanks for letting us know! As soon as prosecutors bring and successfully convict them, we'll be sure to remove them from our platform."

Lyft claims it's because she didn't tell them, and neither did the police.

>Lyft says that when Alison Turkos originally reported the incident to them, she didn’t mention the rape and only sent a message to support asking them to look into the ride. They argue that they basically had no way of knowing she had been raped. We’ve read the messages she sent.

>We first became aware that this was a safety incident when the Wall Street Journal published an article on May 8, 2018. We received a subpoena from law enforcement on May 14, 2018, six months after the ride took place. We complied with the subpoena and worked with law enforcement for over a year as they investigated.

> I hope she really sticks it to Lyft

I agree. This is not just piss poor customer service but IMO (criminal?) negligence to not protect other passengers from this person until the allegations are either proven or disproven. Also it is a shit response to charge the person for the ride.

Seems like the only way these companies will change these days is getting sued and shamed into doing the right thing. It boggles the mind why management at these companies can't put themselves in the shoes of the victim er customer.

Guess its time to #deletelyft

> but IMO (criminal?) negligence to not protect other passengers from this person

So, what's your suggested fix? We should let any unproven accusation be enough to deny someone their income?

As far as I can see, the only reasonable course of action is to provide as much data as you can about the driver and location of the vehicle to police and let them sort it out before acting against the driver.

This kind of situation is what "paid leave" is for. Ride-share companies have the extra employee/contractor divide, but in this case, getting the driver off the road is probably worth the cost in both damages and reputation while the issue is sorted out.

The police themselves would put an officer on paid leave during the investigation, right?

Lyft could suspend the driver, paying them temporarily into escrow, then release that if the allegation is false. Not perfect, but that would mean they had acted quickly and the driver didn't go without income if they were innocent. If it started a rash of false claims so drivers could be paid without working, you can investigate the claimant for fraud (?) and flag the driver's account for review.

Or look into what taxi companies do in these situations.

You can't give someone paid leave if they don't work regular hours. I know everyone likes to mock them for calling them "contractors", but in some ways it makes sense - they're employees doing work on a per-contract basis. There's no magic number you can use to accommodate that, especially if something like this could cause them to lose other jobs and need the income.

Looks like some taxi companies suspend without pay over a lot less though, so do we just call that fair enough? I dunno. Doesn't seem ideal really.

You can pay them some sort of living wage, if the alternative is uproar over innocent drivers being suspended by fake allegations. That's all I'm saying.

This is kind of a tangent, but one of Lyft’s explanations [0] is that the victim’s first (and only, from what they claim they know) complaint to them was how the trip took 80 min instead of 15, and how it strayed far away from the requested destination. And that for Lyft apparently wasn’t enough to elevate the issue (though they did reimburse the extra part of the fare).

The victim’s lawyer argues that, among other things, the excessive trip should alone have warned Lyft. But I guess that unexpectedly long trips, without driver error, might happen often enough that Lyft doesn’t automatically flag them? I can think of one time when I asked the driver to go through the In-N-Out drivethru on the way home (adding maybe 20 min to my trip). I’m sure a non-infinitesimal percentage of riders request lengthy detours (to pick up or drop off a friend).

I was surprised that Lyft quickly gave her the reimbursed fee, but without doing any extra follow up with her. At that point, neither she nor Lyft knew that the main issue wasn’t just user error, but an apparent kidnapping and rape. The victim claims Lyft failed to acknowledge her follow-up complaints. I know Lyft might get countless customer messages on any given day, but it’s a surprise to me that a user who reports a large service disparity isn’t (at least temporarily) elevated in the system. Because the unexpected surcharge may likely be a symptom of a bigger problem, as it seems obviously to be the case with he author here.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vb57w8/lyft-allegedly-kep...

> I was surprised that Lyft quickly gave her the reimbursed fee, but without doing any extra follow up with her.

I consider that amazing customer service tbh, and it has solved many of my grievances with trips.

I am contributing to this conversation to let you know what some others users like me do, and what Lyft sees.

Yeah, I did mean I was “surprised” in a good way, though the policy obviously wasn’t helpful in this specific situation. Do the drivers still get to keep the overcharge?

During the trip its not clear to me what the expected behavior from the service would have been. The suggestion that the customer should be notified or driver questioned when off track just doesnt seem like something a court would agree is a standard expected right now. The idea of negligence would go out the window as soon as they show how many rides go way off track, and how many customers considered that great service because their own requests changed mid trip. The victim here is saying this is part of Lyft’s nonchalant and dismissive attitude to bolster her case, I think it hurts her case, whereas other parts are stronger for reprimanding Lyft.

> At that point, neither she nor Lyft knew that the main issue wasn’t just user error, but an apparent kidnapping and rape.

Did you intend to write that she--being Alison Turkos--didn't know she had been kidnapped and raped?

Perhaps I've misinterpreted what you've written, or you've made a mistake?

That is what Alison Turkos claims, yes. According to her, she initially had no idea anything had happened. Her first clue was the unusually large Lyft bill, which she contacted them about. They couldn't provide any info, suggested the driver may have forgotten to mark the ride as complete, and refunded the excess.

It was only after this she began to put two and two together, realised she was very still and sore, noticed persistent vaginal pain and bleeding, went to the police, and eventually during the course of the investigation realised she had been raped.

Oh, right, sorry, my misunderstanding.

> I was surprised that Lyft quickly gave her the reimbursed fee, but without doing any extra follow up with her.

I haven't used Lyft, but from my experience with Uber, most of such support requests don't get a follow-up. Even if I deliberately ask my driver to take a scenic route and add an hour extra, if I complain to Uber that the driver took a longer route, I can get reimbursed without a follow-up.

You can't keep doing this every time, but Uber sometimes just doesn't want to deal with an investigation and tend to make the driver lose the money. Uber doesn't lose money in this case, so it's an easy decision.

So the driver has no recourse when a malicious actor does that? I'm assuming the driver pays for the extra time.

That sounds a lot like theft to me.

Has more details here: https://heavy.com/news/2019/09/alison-turkos/

I saw a Lyft driver clip a car outside my house - I emailed Lyft to let them know. Provided time, registration, make/model, address.

They replied saying that was insufficient information to identify a driver. So I left a note for the damaged car and suggested they file a police report.

Lost a lot of respect for Lyft that day.

To be fair, you're just a witness. The right move was exactly what you did after, which is to give all the information to the owner of the damaged car. They can pursue things and you can be their witness. But just randomly calling Lyft and telling them this... what exactly do you expect them to do?

All those details are insufficient? That's a BS on Lyft. They could try "thanks, we'll look into it". Instead they were dismissive jerks

Yes, that's insufficient. I mean, what would Lyft look into? Would they call up the driver, and then ask if they clipped a car? And what if the driver said either yes or no? Then what should Lyft do? This is a civil matter between the driver and the car owner, not the driver and OP.

A police report is real and actionable and something Lyft could follow up on. That's something that the person whose car got damaged should pursue, and OP could serve as a witness, which she volunteered to do. That is the proper way to do things.

Just hold it as a soft flag pending confirmation. How hard is that? It's like a bug report that needs validation.

I would withhold judgment here without more information. Two different investigators at the NYPD and the FBI have all investigated and have not (yet) brought any charges. Given that the identity of the driver is known, this suggests that none of these investigators found her story credible.

Something seems off here. She is suing Lyft, ok. NO WHERE that I can see, does she demand that her rapists be prosecuted and be sentenced for their crime. Her focus is only on suing Lyft. If I was raped, I would be demanding that my rapists be charged and sent to prison, not only for closure for myself, the security of knowing they are off the street and I'm not in danger anymore, but also knowing they won't be able to do this to another woman! Instead it's all about Lyft not taking her complaint seriously and being insensitive. It appears she didn't even tell them what happened right away. Am I missing something?

The lawsuit[1] itself gives a lot more details.

This is horrifying to think that Lyft does not even cooperate: "45. Throughout the investigation by the NYPD and the FBI, LYFT has been wholly uncooperative."

[1]: https://www.levinsimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Levin-...

That's the author's allegation, but how would they even know about any communications between the police and Lyft?

> That's the author's allegation

That's a fair point.

It is time we hold ride sharing companies, indeed any company that uses so called "contractors", liable for the damage or criminal behavior committed on company time.

Contact a lawyer. Use the legal and criminal justice system to hold them accountable. Sue for damages. Contact your state or federal representative to push for laws to do so.

archive.org mirror, because important stories like this one shouldn't be at risk of disappearing behind the Medium paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190918020021/https://medium.co...

Thanks. I was intrigued by the story and comments, but have zero interest in subscribing to medium.

Also, since she chose to make it a 'premium' article that means she will make money from it right? Makes me have an eyebrow raised.

What a horrible story. I can't imagine how terrible of an experience thay must have been.

Just wish I knew more details about the police investigation. Why isn't this guy in jail? Did it go to trial? If not, why? She knows his car, apparently his name/ pseudonym, wasn't he questioned?

I get the feeling the police department failed her more than anything. I'm not sure how much Lyft can even do here. They aren't law enforcement.

There's a lack of substance in this article. Why is it that this alleged rapist, kidnapper, and his associates are not in prison? I don't see why Lyft is responsible for criminal acts performed by their contractors/employees. Even if they didn't do background checks, which they do, why should they be responsible?

That said, Lyft insisting she pay for the ride is an incredibly strange twist. Maybe it's a legal maneuver? They've refunded a ride to me for something as simple as a dirty car that caused me to need to dry clean my clothing.

edit: From another article, it becomes clear. Lyft didn't know it was an alleged rape.

Something about this stinks.

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