Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading everyday super app, today raised the bar for transportation safety in Thailand by another notch, supporting the government in its drive to bring about world-class public transportation safety standards for its citizens and visitors to the country.
As part of its Tech Roadmap1 unveiled in October last year, Grab today announced a suite of new safety tech initiatives, including an in-app ‘Safety Centre’ and ‘Passenger Selfie Verification Technology’, to give passengers and driver-partners even greater peace of mind during their ride with Grab. This moves Grab one step closer to its target of bringing preventable incidents across all Grab services down to zero to create a safer everyday for all Thais to live in.
Tarin Thaniyavarn, Country Head of Grab Thailand said: “To us at Grab, every trip completed safely counts as a life saved. This is how much emphasis we place on the safety of every user on our Grab platform. Our journey towards zero is a mission we are fully committed to. On top of our advanced safety tech roadmap, we are the only major player in Thailand to have invested in crucial safety operations such as a 24/7 customer support centre, personal accident insurance coverage for both passengers and driver-partners for every ride, and strict driver-partner background checks before allowing them to accept rides. These are strong safety foundations we have laid over the years, and will continue to do so.”
With the new in-app ‘Safety Centre’, all passengers riding with Grab are now able to access multiple safety features in a one-stop tap:
As part of its Tech Roadmap1 unveiled in October last year, Grab today announced a suite of new safety tech initiatives, including an in-app ‘Safety Centre’ and ‘Passenger Selfie Verification Technology’, to give passengers and driver-partners even greater peace of mind during their ride with Grab. This moves Grab one step closer to its target of bringing preventable incidents across all Grab services down to zero to create a safer everyday for all Thais to live in.
Tarin Thaniyavarn, Country Head of Grab Thailand said: “To us at Grab, every trip completed safely counts as a life saved. This is how much emphasis we place on the safety of every user on our Grab platform. Our journey towards zero is a mission we are fully committed to. On top of our advanced safety tech roadmap, we are the only major player in Thailand to have invested in crucial safety operations such as a 24/7 customer support centre, personal accident insurance coverage for both passengers and driver-partners for every ride, and strict driver-partner background checks before allowing them to accept rides. These are strong safety foundations we have laid over the years, and will continue to do so.”
With the new in-app ‘Safety Centre’, all passengers riding with Grab are now able to access multiple safety features in a one-stop tap:
- Share Ride Details: Grab is the first in Southeast Asia to pioneer the ‘Share My Ride’ feature, to give passengers’ loved ones peace of mind, knowing that they can track their live GPS location and trip status. Grab has further enhanced this feature to offer greater assurance such as providing driver’s details and the estimated time of arrival.
- Report a Safety Issue: Passengers can now easily report any safety concerns, for example, unsafe driving, at any point of their ride to enable Grab to take prompt action against potential safety incidents.
- Get Emergency Help: In the event of an emergency during a ride, passengers can launch a call to the police hotline. An SMS alert containing their ride details and current location will be automatically sent to their assigned Emergency Contacts. This feature has also been enhanced to allow passengers to track the status of emergency help.
Grab places equal emphasis on protecting the well-being of its driver-partners and passengers, striving to improve safeguards for all who use the platform. While passenger-initiated crimes against driver-partners are kept low in Thailand, as an additional safeguard, Grab implemented a new Passenger Selfie Verification Technology – the first ride-hailing player in Southeast Asia and the world to do so. For a start, only new user sign-ups will need to authenticate their identity with either a selfie or credit card validation. This technology has proven to be a very effective deterrence against passenger-related crimes. In other parts of Southeast Asia, Grab’s passenger selfie technology has helped police swiftly solve such crimes against drivers.
“We know the government places a lot of emphasis on public transport safety; we share the same goal. As the government moves towards the legalization of ride-hailing in Thailand, the responsibility of each and every player in the industry enlarges. We will continue to innovate and set the highest bar for world class transportation safety standards in Thailand, be it improving driving safety or preventing crime and violence. Most importantly, our safety tech features are fully scalable and can be quickly applied across all users of Grab services, be it GrabTaxi or GrabCar. This will help all other players in the public transportation network adhere to the same high safety standards to offer the greatest assurance for all passengers and driver-partners,” added Tarin.
According to the World Health Organization, Thailand has the highest road traffic fatality in Southeast Asia2. The government announced that the high number of road deaths has resulted in 500 billion baht in economic losses3. Grab is committed to supporting the Thai government in its goal to reduce road traffic accidents by 50% in 2020, and preventing crimes and violence in public transport, through advanced safety technologies and operational standards. Please refer to Appendix on Grab’s key safety innovations.
Regionally, Grab has been continually setting a high bar for transportation safety standards. In 2018, across the 8 countries it operates in including Thailand, Grab ride-hailing services were 1.3 times safer in terms of driver-related accidents and 1.8 times safer in terms of driver-related offences, when benchmarked against the minimum Quality of Service standards set by Singapore regulators for monitoring the safety and service performance of Singapore’s taxi industry4.
