Bolt, Africa’s leading on-demand mobility platform, reinforces its unwavering commitment to safety with the introduction of two cutting-edge features: Trip Monitoring and Driver Alerts.
These proactive safety measures will provide real-time support through advanced trip monitoring capabilities and insightful alerts for drivers, enhancing the reliability and security of Bolt rides.
Enhanced Safety Features
 This feature makes for a quick and easy way to access emergency services or request assistance. Complementing this, the Driver Alerts feature equips drivers with valuable information about upcoming trips, ensuring they can make informed decisions, particularly in areas flagged for safety concerns.
Route Deviation and Delayed Ride Completion Features
Bolt plans to roll out even more trip safety monitoring features, including route deviation and delayed ride completion. This is all part of Bolt’s ongoing investment and upgrades to safety features on its platform, enabling more support for drivers and passengers and helping to identify and deter improper driver and passenger behaviour.
Takura Malaba, Regional Manager, East and Southern Africa at Bolt, said: “At Bolt, safety is our top priority, and we are constantly working on new products and features to continue to improve the safety ecosystem of the Bolt app, offering drivers and passengers a high-quality ride-hailing experience. Rolling out new trip safety monitoring features, as well as driver alerts, is the latest set of upgrades to our ongoing efforts to make it possible for drivers and passengers to seek support if they ever need it.”
Intervention Amidst Safety Concerns
As an intervention to heighten safety on the platform, Bolt recently launched safety features such as the audio trip recording feature that empowers both drivers and passengers to initiate an audio recording of their trip within the Bolt app, as well as passenger verification that prompts passenger to take a selfie before they are able to place a ride-hailing order to enhance driver-passenger trust.
Existing Safety Tools
Other existing safety tools available include free trauma counselling following any traumatic incident while using the platform through our partner Oaksure, Bolt Trip Protection, at no cost to cover emergency medical expenses, permanent disability, and death caused by an incident while on a Bolt trip, as well as trip sharing for real-time location sharing with friends and family.