Lyft’s new feature lets women and non-binary riders request their driver’s gender
NEW YORK –
Lyft is introducing a brand new function that lets girls and non-binary riders select a choice to match with drivers of the identical gender.
The ride-hailing firm stated it was a “highly requested feature” in a weblog put up Tuesday, saying the brand new function permits girls and non-binary individuals to “feel that much more confident” in utilizing Lyft and likewise hopefully encourages extra girls to enroll to be drivers to entry its “flexible earning opportunities.”
The service, referred to as “Women+ Connect,” is rolling out within the coming months. Riders can activate the choice within the Lyft app, nonetheless, the corporate warns that it’s not a assure that they’ll be matched with a girl or non-binary individual if a kind of individuals aren’t close by. Both the riders and drivers might want to opt-in to the function for it to work and riders should select a gender for it to work.
Although girls embody “nearly half” of its riders, Lyft stated that simply 23 per cent of its drivers are girls, the corporate stated. The function was additionally constructed with help from outdoors organizations, together with the Human Rights Campaign and the U.S. National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives.
Lyft and its rival Uber have been below scrutiny for years about riders’ security, particularly with sexual assault incidents. Lyft stated in 2021 that it obtained 4,158 reviews of sexual assault between 2017 and 2019, a disclosure that was revealed in a security report prompted by a CNN investigation. However, Lyft stated the overwhelming majority of journeys (or 99 per cent) had no reported security incidents for the time interval included in its report.
Last yr, Lyft agreed to a US$25 million settlement with shareholders pertaining to statements and disclosures about its business, together with particularly round assault-related incidents, forward of going public in 2019.
In March 2021, Uber and Lyft introduced they might share the names of drivers who have been deactivated over essentially the most extreme security incidents together with sexual assaults, which vary from non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual physique half to rape. The info sharing is being managed by a third-party client reporting company, Hire Right.
