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 announced the launch of Girls+ Join, which permits girls to prioritize matching with girls or nonbinary drivers for his or her journeys. The characteristic will be activated inside the settings tab on the app, and is on the market in San Francisco, Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Jose, with plans to develop to different places quickly. Though the brand new characteristic 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 accessible to Lyft customers who establish as feminine or nonbinary.
The corporate says the brand new characteristic was designed to reinforce security and promote feminine participation in its ride-hailing service.
“Girls drivers inform us it is exhausting to drive at evening,” Jody Kelman, Lyft’s government vp of consumers, informed The New York Times. “We have to take away a barrier for girls drivers as we speak.”
Lyft’s female-forward characteristic comes amid rising consciousness of security considerations associated to ride-sharing apps.
Associated: DoorDash Worker Says Buyer Pulled Knife on Her Throughout Creepy Supply: ‘I Simply Need Some Human Contact’
Gig Employees Rising, an activist group preventing for the protection and safety of gig staff, found that 80 app-based staff have been killed on the job between 2017 and 2022, and 31 have been murdered in 2022 alone.
In 2021, an NBC investigation spoke to 15 gig workers, 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 ability to record the experience by means of the front-facing digital camera, and the choice to seize audio throughout the journey. In June, Doordash added a brand new security characteristic that enables drivers to share their journeys with as much as 5 contacts.
Associated: Uber, Lyft to Share Info About Drivers Banned for Assault
Supply: Entrepreneur