The Department of Transport (DoT) has formalised regulations for the e-hailing industry, intended to improve safety for both drivers and passengers.
Transport Minister Barbara Creecy said that her department was aware of the risks associated with e-hailing services in South Africa.
As a result, the DoT has developed regulations imposing new safety-feature requirements for e-hailing vehicles, including panic buttons and live location tracking.
“The national land transport regulations specify safety features for e-hailing vehicles,” said Creecy in reply to a question from a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Transport.
“Sub-regulation calls for a panic button to be installed in the vehicle and also encourages the use of an in-app panic button, whichever is convenient to use when necessary.”
The live tracking aspect also requires that vehicles record their entire journeys from beginning to end.
Passengers must be informed of the driver’s arrival, along with a recent photo of the individual and the car’s details.
These rules are meant to improve safety for passengers and drivers on platforms like Bolt and Uber, who are being increasingly targeted by violent criminals.
Drivers have been victims of hijackings, theft, and even murder, often by criminals posing as paying customers.
At the same time, riders have to deal with issues like fake e-hailing operators, who linger in areas like airport parking lots looking for passengers.
While some of these fake operators are simply individuals trying to make a living, there is a real danger of criminals luring unsuspecting travellers to remote areas to be robbed or assaulted.
Concerns over new regulations
Earlier this year, the president of the National e-Hailing Federation of South Africa (NEFSA), Elijah Lekgowane, stated that more needs to be done to address safety issues.
In an April interview with the SABC, Lekgowane said that things like panic buttons are a minor issue, and that the industry’s woes stem from widespread violence and the state of the South African economy.
He also raised concerns with the new regulation requiring that all e-hailing cars should carry visible branding.
While this measure is intended to combat the issue of fake e-hailing drivers, it effectively paints a target on all e-hailing cars and their drivers, who have been targeted by the taxi industry for years.
“Branding on its own, it also increases the risk of those drivers, they’re attacked now as identified picking up passengers, and now it’s going to be a clear target when it’s branded,” said Lekgowane.
Creecy was asked whether the DoT was considering making it mandatory for e-hailing operators to integrate panic button responses between operators and the South African Police Service.
“The department has not considered making these measures mandatory,” she said.
“There are measures proposed in the regulations, and other measures can be coordinated by the industry itself.”
Right now, e-hailing operators are required to install panic buttons in vehicles for drivers and passengers, but they are left to their own devices to do so.
Uber has partnered with the Johannesburg-based safety infrastructure and panic alert provider Aura for its service.
Through this partnership, Uber cars fitted with panic buttons can alert Aura’s nationwide system, which automatically contacts the nearest private armed service provider.
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