Bolt is currently the most popular taxi-hailing app in Kenya in terms of affordability and availability. Be it a motorbike, a car, or a scooter, Bolt has become one of the most integral parts of millions of Kenyans, especially in urban centers. The Estonian-based company entered Nigeria and South Africa in 2016. Over the years, it has become the market leader in five major African markets; South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Kenya. Expanding its footprint, Bolt started operations in Q1 2024 in Egypt, Zimbabwe, DRC, Botswana, and Namibia, further solidifying its continental presence.
The safety of both drivers and passengers has been a continuous topic of discussion over the past few years. As a result, Bolt continuously works round the clock to implement measures that ensure that their stakeholders are comfortable. Some time back, safety complaints were raised against some of the drivers affiliated with Bolt, and in a move to address the issue, Bolt took some stringent measures to ensure that riders feel safe at all times.
The first action that Bolt took was to purge over 5,000 drivers from their system for not adhering to the company’s clearly-laid safety guidelines. This means that the said drivers lost the privilege of ever operating under this popular app.
“Safety needs to be an ongoing concern for everybody in the industry. When I think about ‘safety’, it is not just about incident management because that is the narrow view many people take, but it is about ‘are we being proactive,” said Dimmy Kanyankole, a General Manager for Bolt Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya.
Among the other interesting safety measures that Bolt runs without the knowledge of the rider but in their best interest is on rating of the driver. Did you know that as a rider, your rating affects the driver? If a rider rates a driver with one star or complains at the end of a trip, Bolt takes that as a sign of dissatisfaction from the rider and as a result, they try not to connect the driver and said rider on another future trip.
Taking its safety measures to the next level, over the next three years, Bolt is investing 14 billion shillings in raising awareness of their safety features and scaling up preventive measures. Bolt’s Safety Team of over 500 people works relentlessly towards Bolt’s safety goals. Safety specialists and experts come together to tackle some of the most complex challenges in ride-hailing. Based in Bolt’s Tallinn HQ, the team’s core includes safety Experts specially trained in product development, engineering, and operations.
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