October 19th 2023.
Antonio Cartagena, a 25-year-old Macon, Georgia resident, was arrested after being accused of sexually assaulting a Lyft driver. According to The Telegraph, the Duluth Police Department says that Cartagena groped a driver who was transporting him on Oct. 10, and also performed "lewd acts" in the back seat of the car.
The driver, a 55-year-old woman, stated that she was horrified when she turned around and saw that Cartagena was half-undressed and performing vulgar acts in the back seat of the car. After the attack, he fled on foot, but was later captured and held in Gwinnett County Jail on $11,400 bond, which he paid.
A spokesperson for Lyft emphasized their commitment to driver safety, stating that “Safety is fundamental to Lyft. The behavior described is reprehensible and has no place in the Lyft community or anywhere in society. We permanently banned the individual from the Lyft platform and have reached out to the driver to offer our support.”
Employee Benefit News reported that two-thirds of rideshare drivers reported being harassed in 2022, and the problem was acutely worse for drivers of color. Of the drivers of color surveyed, 86% reported being called a racial, ethnic, or religious slur.
Joan Moriarty, director of strategic research and campaigns at the Strategic Organizing Center, highlighted the risk that rideshare drivers are forced to take in order to maintain their income. She stated that “These statistics are just from the last 12 months, and it’s not that something has changed in the last year. It’s that the corporate policies of Uber and Lyft force workers to accept rides they don’t feel are safe and don’t let them stop rides in the middle if they’re being harassed.”
Moriarty also spoke of the difficult decisions that drivers have to make between their safety and their livelihoods. She said, “Drivers depend on this income to survive and have their families survive. So when forced to make these choices, they’ll choose to put themselves at risk.”
Moriarty concluded by calling on rideshare companies to prioritize driver safety. She stated, “Both Lyft and Uber really actively promote their passenger safety measures. Driver safety is not antithetical to passenger safety, and companies are going to really need to take a hard look at their policies.”
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