Ride-hailing platform Bolt has launched Trusted Contacts, a feature allowing riders and driver partners to add friends or family members to their accounts so that Bolt’s Safety Team can contact them if the account holder is unreachable.
This is according to a statement from the company on Saturday.
The feature is part of Bolt’s investment in safety enhancements and aims to improve response times to Ride Check notifications, Emergency Assist requests, and other security incidents.
Bolt, which has committed €100m over three years to strengthen safety measures, said the new feature builds on existing tools, including Ride Check, Share Location, and Emergency Assist.
Ride Check detects trip irregularities, Share Location enables real-time tracking, and Emergency Assist discreetly alerts emergency services or security partners.
The General Manager at Bolt, Osi Oguah, said, “With Trusted Contacts, we aim to build on our Safety Team’s existing efforts by ensuring we can quickly escalate a Ride Check notification or Emergency Assist request to a friend or family member if we can’t get a hold of the Bolt account holders, themselves.
“It’s part of our ongoing investment in safety through new products, features, and our dedicated in-house specially trained safety team to ensure that we can continue to improve the safety ecosystem of the Bolt app, offering drivers and riders a high-quality ride-hailing experience.”
