By Wanique Block
Living in the rape capital of the world, as a woman and queer person means that you’re constantly looking for ways to be safe and to protect yourself.
Measures like sharing live locations with close friends or taking videos/audio recordings of your surroundings have now become a standard practice and measure for safety.
One Tik-Tok user found herself doing the exact same thing during an uncomfortable and terrifying Uber drive.
During an Uber drive, Nicole Mokgopa started recording her conversation with her Uber driver when he started asking her uncomfortable questions about her sexual preferences.
“Which one do you prefer the most, boy or girl”, he asked.
In the video, the driver further proceeds to interrogate Nicole about her sexual experiences.
He continued: “How do you f***k?”, to which Nicole told him to not ask her that.
Not only does this video highlight the trauma of what it means to be a woman in South Africa, but it also highlights how dangerous and toxic men are. Not to mention, displaying how men have no regard for a woman’s safety.
This encounter is not the first or second time we’ve seen this happen, many women have previously reported either experiencing similar encounters to Nicole or spoken up about the abuse they have experienced at the hands of Bolt drivers.
Which makes us wonder, what measures are e-hailing services like Uber taking to keep passengers safe, and is it enough?
To answer this, South Africa’s E-hailing Uber service has recently launched a new feature on its platform that allows you to record audio during your trip, in the event you feel that your safety is compromised.
Forming part of Uber’s Safety Toolkit feature, this new feature allows riders and drivers to save encrypted audio files to their devices.
Both the rider and driver will not be able to listen back. Once a support ticket is logged on the Uber app, the audio will be sent to its safety team, and the file will be decrypted.
Although this seems like a step in the right direction, one can argue why this took them so long to implement and whether or not their efforts are enough.
Watch the video below:
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