In the case of utilizing a ride-sharing app, everybody has their preferences — silence, music, whether or not or not you need the home windows down. Nevertheless, Lyft is taking it one step additional, and giving riders a choice on the gender of their driver.
On Tuesday, the ride-sharing app introduced the launch of Ladies+ Join, which permits girls to prioritize matching with girls or nonbinary drivers for his or her journeys. The characteristic may be activated inside the settings tab on the app, and is offered in San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Jose, with plans to develop to different areas quickly. Though the brand new characteristic will prioritize being matched with a feminine or nonbinary rider/driver, a consumer should be matched with a male if no customers of the specified gender can be found within the space.
This system is just accessible to Lyft customers who determine as feminine or nonbinary.
The corporate says the brand new characteristic was designed to boost security and promote feminine participation in its ride-hailing service.
“Ladies drivers inform us it is laborious to drive at evening,” Jody Kelman, Lyft’s govt vp of shoppers, informed The New York Instances. “We have to take away a barrier for ladies drivers immediately.”
Lyft’s female-forward characteristic comes amid rising consciousness of security considerations associated to ride-sharing apps.
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Gig Employees Rising, an activist group preventing for the protection and safety of gig employees, discovered that 80 app-based employees had been killed on the job between 2017 and 2022, and 31 had been murdered in 2022 alone.
In 2021, an NBC investigation spoke to 15 gig employees, and all admitted they’ve “feared for his or her security” whereas on the job.
Within the wake of the violence, a number of gig-based apps have taken measures to buffer security options for riders and drivers. Since 2021, Uber has rolled out a collection of enhanced security options together with stricter verification procedures, freezing accounts of customers exhibiting suspicious habits, the capacity to file the journey by the front-facing digital camera, and the choice to seize audio in the course of the journey. In June, Doordash added a brand new security characteristic that permits drivers to share their journeys with as much as 5 contacts.
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