Mumbai: The next time you are in distress in a radio cab, all you have to do is click an ‘SOS’ button that will send an alert to the police control room and three contacts of your relatives registered by you with the cab operators.
All radio taxi operators were asked to install safety measures in taxis following the rape of an executive of a multinational company in Delhi by an Uber cab driver. The cab operators were asked to submit the detailed plan by December 31 and incorporate the safety features by January 15.
One of the first radio taxi operators to have initiated the safety feature is ‘Book my cab,’ which has installed the ‘SOS’ button in its mobile application and will be introducing the same in its cabs. The ‘SOS’ button, once pressed, will send an alert to the police who will get the real time location of the passenger. The director of the call-based taxi service, Avinash Gupta, said, “We are working on installing a similar ‘SOS’ button in the taxi physically to ensure that the passenger can conveniently alert the cops as well as the company and their family.”
Other fleet operators such as Meru have also introduced the safety feature as a part of their service. A spokesperson from Meru said, “We also have installed a trip tracker which keeps on sending the location of the passenger to their trusted contacts until the passenger reaches his/her destination. Also, ICE (In case of Emergency) alert, is an option in the application, which, when pressed, sends a buzzer to the trusted contact who can then take a call.”
Other cab operators such as Cabzo are still working on installing the safety features in their fleet. Tarun Kodnani, the director of Cabzo, said, “We are working on the safety features which we have already discussed with the transport department and with their help we will be able to introduce it in our cabs in a couple of days.”
