The art of not kicking the competition when it is down

The New York Times has a good article on Lyft’s public response to Uber’s woes. Or, rather, on the lack of it.

It may well be tempting for Lyft, GrabTaxi and other ride-hail companies to kick Uber publicly when it is down.

Lyft is right not to.

At at a time of greatly increased scrutiny on Uber, and when the major players face many of the same issues, from fair pay and concerns about driver conduct to driver churn, immigration clamp-downs and widespread skepticism about self-driving cars, gloating or worse is likely to be seen as opportunistic, serve to further alienate key constituencies in government and elsewhere, and risk drawing even greater attention to the industry as a whole.

Nobody wants to be seen to be participating in a race to the bottom.