Lyft driver abandons four USC students on freeway

A Lyft driver who dropped four USC students off on the side of the I-10 Freeway last week has been suspended from driving for the service, which contracts with the University to provide free rides to students in the University Park area during designated times.

Sydney Nguyen, a senior majoring in business administration, said she and three friends were kicked out of their Lyft around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning while heading back to campus from a birthday celebration after the driver became enraged by their noise level.

In a statement, Lyft said that it deactivated Nguyen’s account as well as the driver’s, and is investigating the incident.

“The safety of the Lyft community is our top priority, and we take these reports very seriously,” the statement said.

According to Nguyen, her account was reinstated on Monday while the driver’s account will remain permanently disabled.

Nguyen, who wrote about the experience in a Facebook post, said the driver allowed them to turn on music, but became agitated when they began to sing along. The driver yelled at Nguyen’s friends in the back of the car and accused them of being drunk, though Nguyen said they were not. After everyone had quieted down, one of Nguyen’s friends laughed, at which point the Lyft driver threatened to kick them out before they reached their destination. One of Nguyen’s friends apologized and tried to reason with the driver.

“I just felt like I needed to speak up for them,” Nguyen said. “[I said,] ‘OK, if you’re going to handle the situation like this, I’m going to be giving you a bad rating.’”

Nguyen asked the driver to take them to the nearest exit so they could call a different Lyft. Instead, the driver reportedly pulled onto the shoulder lane of the I-10 freeway headed toward USC and told Nguyen and her friends to “get the f-ck out” of his car.

“I [was] in disbelief,” Nguyen said. “This escalated further than [I could] ever imagine.”

The walk to the nearest exit took nearly 25 minutes, and it was so dark that Nguyen feared she and her friends would get hit by passing traffic.

For Nguyen, as well as students who read her account on Facebook, the incident drew attention to the safety risks of using rideshare services. In January, NBC Los Angeles reported that a Lyft passenger was killed in a hit-and-run after being dropped off along the side of the I-110 freeway.

USC started its Safe Rides Program in 2015, and has contracted with Lyft since August 2017. Although Nguyen’s Lyft was not paid for by the Safe Rides Program, she feared that other students may have similar experiences with other Lyft drivers.

“I felt like I needed to speak to the community because we heavily rely on [Lyft] to get to and from campus,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen said there should be a better system in place for matching drivers with passengers, and that Lyft’s safety features should be easier to use. She found that Lyft’s emergency hotline is only accessible by talking on the phone with a Lyft representative, and can’t be reached directly through the app.

“There’s so many clicks [needed] just to get to the hotline,” Nguyen said. “I was like, why isn’t this just a one-click thing on [the] app?”

USC did not comment on the incident in time for publication.