With all the convenience brought to you by e-hailing services, you pretty much don’t need to worry about having no transports these days. However, there is no light without darkness. The e-hailing services can still cause issues between the drivers and riders since there are still human beings involved after all (unless the car is driven by AI). Uber, the used-to-be popular e-hailing service in Malaysia, revealed that it has received over 6000 reports of sexual abuse in 2017 and 2018.
Uber is trying to be open and unafraid of sharing their statistics when it comes to safety concerns of its drivers and riders. Therefore, sharing the numbers is the first step to increase the transparency of the company and bring awareness to such issues among e-hailing services.
With this ongoing issue, Uber has proposed a few initiatives to improve the situation. Among the efforts, Uber is sharing the names of the drivers who have been banned from the company to other e-hailing service operators. This is to prevent the drivers to register themselves again and work with other companies.
Other than that, Uber is rolling out features that allow riders to verify their drivers with a secure PIN code, send a text message directly to 911 operators, and report safety incidents to Uber even before their trip is over. In 2020, Uber is also partnering with several anti sexual violence organisations to conduct more comprehensive programs regarding sexual misconduct.
Not only Uber, several cases of sexual assault have also happened in our country while using e-hailing services. These cases led the Land Public Transport Commission to instruct all the e-hailing services operators in our country to include a panic button in their apps.
With all the convenience given to us by technology, there are still certain precautions that we have to watch out to keep ourselves safe. Let us know what you think about this issue on our Facebook page! For more tech news, stay tuned on TechNave.com.
COMMENTS