Ride-hailing platform Bolt, launched in Botswana in February, has committed €100 million to improving safety. The money will be used across Bolt's global markets for a period of three years.
Despite being the closest competitor to Uber, Bolt has faced security issues both for drivers and riders. In March, a South African Bolt driver was convicted for numerous cases of rape. Last month, a Bolt driver was shot dead by a passenger in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Bolt's investment will support The Bolt Safety Team in its critical work of product development, customer support, safety feature awareness, and preventative measures to minimise safety incidents.
As part of the commitment, new trip verification features will join Bolt's suite of safety tools in the coming months. These features will include trip count and unique four-digit trip pickup codes to help match riders and driver partners. Bolt will also continue to scale its Rider Verification solution.
Bolt will also continue to invest in upgrading existing features like Ride Check to proactively detect if a trip's route unexpectedly changes or takes longer than expected to finish and introduce Trusted Contacts to ensure Ride Check notifications are escalated to a friend or loved one if needed.
Record Audio will continue to support The Bolt Safety Team's safety investigations and has already been used to trigger in-app audio recordings to submit with Customer Support tickets across 14 markets, including South Africa, since launch.