Megan Osinski is a 27-year-old operations manager at a Los Angeles pet product company; like many women in L.A., she uses ride-hail a few times a week — but she only ever uses Lyft. "I've had friends who've had Uber drivers save their address and come back later,” Osinksi told BuzzFeed News. “I've been in a car before and a driver has said, 'You shouldn't wear that unless you want someone to have sex with you.'"



At this point, Osinski has taken to trying to convince her friends not to use Uber: "Whenever someone says they are taking Uber I will always tell them to check out Lyft instead, usually saying that the price is cheaper and the drivers aren't as creepy."

Osinski's not the only person who's adopted Lyft as a sort of conscious consumer choice. In interviews with more than a dozen women in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Austin — the cities where Lyft has had the biggest market share — the prevailing sentiment seemed to be that people think Lyft is the lesser of two evils — whether or not they actually have much evidence to support the theory.

"This could just be really good PR, but I think Lyft is friendlier than Uber," Rita Rausch, a 25-year-old law firm coordinator living in Los Angeles, told BuzzFeed News, adding that the service "seems to be more grassroots."

"Uber is like Walmart and Lyft is more like Target," said Chloe Feller, a 20-year-old video producer from Los Angeles. "I don't shop at Walmart because of their business practices and how they treat their employees ... I tell people who are visiting, don't take Uber, take Lyft."

Indeed, whether by virtue of its strategic silence on policy issues, its underdog position as the second in the market, or those fuzzy pink mustaches, Lyft seems to enjoy a reputation as a kinder, gentler ride-hail company. But it takes two to race to the bottom, and on a number of policy issues the two companies are more alike than they are different. Both rely on an army of contract labor, both have tussled with local governments, and both have far from spotless records on rider and driver safety.

Earlier this year, BuzzFeed News published screenshots of Uber’s internal customer complaint tracking database that revealed that the company has thousands of support tickets containing the phrases “rape” and “sexual assault.” While it's true that there have been fewer cases of alleged sexual assault by Lyft drivers in the press than there have been by Uber drivers, that company has not been immune from sexual assault and harassment allegations either. (And, of course, there are fewer Lyft drivers to begin with.)

In February, a University of North Florida student sued Lyft, alleging that her driver had sexually assaulted her. And in November, Austin police stated that they had received seven complaints about alleged sexual assaults from ride-sharing drivers — five Uber drivers and two Lyft drivers.