Online taxi hailing service, Uber has partnered with Aura, a technology platform that provides access to local emergency response teams in an attempt to improve safety for both customers and drivers.
This follows a spate of attacks on Uber drivers since 2016, largely believed to be due to competition with metre taxi drivers. Between 2013 and September 2017 there has been close to 200 attacks on Uber drivers with at least 28 arrests.
Following a spate of attacks against e-hailing taxi drivers, Uber has teamed up with technology platform Aura to try and improve driver’s safety in South Africa. Drivers will be able to use the Aura app as and when they feel their lives are in danger.
CEO of Aura, Warren Myers explains how the app will help drivers.
“When an Uber driver is in a threatening situation or he doesn’t feel comfortable, he would hit a help me button on his app and that sends out a ping to our network of response companies and the closest company. Responded device is notified who that driver is, where he is and what situation he is possibly in and that driver is navigated directly to the driver the quickest route through the Google maps technology.”
Uber now has around one million active users in South Africa, with over 12-thousand active drivers using the ride-hailing app.
General Manager for Uber Sub-Saharan Africa, Alon Lits says they have been working with Aura over the past two years to perfect the App and ensure maximum capability.
“This is not something that has happened recently, this is something that has been developing and we been innovating on over the last two, three years and the way it started off.”
“Unfortunately we have seen spates of taxi intimidation across South Africa, particularly in Johannesburg. We realised in the event of a security incident it may be difficult to pull out the phone and actually call a number so that is why we in partnership with Aura, develop the response app for drivers,” says Lits.
Lits has also called on government and police to pull up their socks and ensure that suspects in attacks on e-hailing taxi drivers are arrested and prosecuted.
He says it’s extremely disappointing that hardly any arrests are being made.
“There have been some serious incidents this year but unfortunately there have not been any arrests and from our perspective that is unacceptable and we need to see arrests being made so, that is something that seems to be missing here and we do call on law enforcement to ensure that arrests are made given some of the incidents not related to Uber but related to taxi intimidation as soon as possible.”
In the most recent incident, Taxify driver, Moipolai Sekati was found dead in Soweto earlier this month after he went missing while working. No one has been arrested for his murder.
