E-hailing company, Bolt is introducing a new Trusted Contacts feature on its platform, enabling passengers and drivers to add names and phone numbers of friends or relatives to a list of contacts for their account.

This feature is an addition to a suite of existing features in Bolt’s in-app safety toolkit, which include the Emergency Assist feature to help riders quickly alert emergency services or Bolt’s private security partners, Ride Monitoring to proactively detect when there’s something out of the ordinary during a trip, and real-time location sharing features, among others.

According to a statement by Bolt, this will allow their safety team to get in touch with the account holder’s trusted contacts during an emergency.

“With Trusted Contacts, we aim to build on our 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 holder, themselves,” says Lerato Motsoeneng, Senior General Manager Bolt South Africa.

Bolt said this latest safety feature is another step towards ensuring a safe and reliable ride-hailing experience. It forms part of its €100 million (R1.87 billion) commitment over three years that was announced in November last year.

“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,” adds Motsoeneng.

IOL