Relating to utilizing a ride-sharing app, everybody has their preferences — silence, music, whether or not or not you need the home windows down. Nonetheless, 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 Girls+ Join, which permits ladies to prioritize matching with ladies or nonbinary drivers for his or her journeys. The function may be activated inside the settings tab on the app, and is out there in San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Jose, with plans to broaden to different places quickly. Though the brand new function will prioritize being matched with a feminine or nonbinary rider/driver, a person should still be matched with a male if no customers of the specified gender can be found within the space.
This system is simply out there to Lyft customers who determine as feminine or nonbinary.
The corporate says the brand new function was designed to boost security and promote feminine participation in its ride-hailing service.
“Girls drivers inform us it is laborious to drive at evening,” Jody Kelman, Lyft’s govt vice chairman of consumers, informed The New York Occasions. “We have to take away a barrier for ladies drivers at present.”
Lyft’s female-forward function comes amid rising consciousness of security issues associated to ride-sharing apps.
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Gig Staff Rising, an activist group preventing for the protection and safety of gig staff, discovered that 80 app-based staff 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 staff, 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 sequence of enhanced security options together with stricter verification procedures, freezing accounts of customers exhibiting suspicious conduct, the skill to file the trip by the front-facing digicam, and the choice to seize audio throughout the journey. In June, Doordash added a brand new security function that permits drivers to share their journeys with as much as 5 contacts.
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