Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

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?

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.

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.

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).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com