After being plagued by incidents of sexual harassment and misconduct, cab aggregator Ola launched project ‘Guardian’, a real-time monitoring system, aimed at customer safety. The programme is being launched as a pilot in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune, and is part of Ola’s national programme on safety, ‘Street Safe’.
The company said Guardian will go live in Delhi and Kolkata by the end of next month and will be rolled out in other cities by the end of the year.
As part of project Guardian, all on-going trips will be tracked by analysing ride indicators that include route deviations, unexpected and midway stops, among others. Based on the indicators and time of travel, safety triggers will be created which, Ola said would be attended to immediately by Ola’s Safety Response Team (SRT).
Ola added that post analysing the data, the SRT will connect with the customer to assess any potential unsafe ride and provide assistance as required.
The unicorn added that it is working with government authorities to map dark spots and unsafe routes into the monitoring platform. It is also taking steps to curb driver impersonation.
Several complaints have been reported by users in various cities of sexual assault and harassment by drivers. In a recent case, a Bengaluru woman was almost kidnapped by a drunk Ola driver.
These cases have been reported by Uber users as well and both companies have been criticised for not doing enough for riders, especially women’s safety.
An Uber spokesperson said that the company does train drivers on sexual harassment and gender sensitivity, Ola didn’t comment at the time of this publication but The News Minute had reported that Ola has no such training for its drivers.
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