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Grab promotes safety for driver and delivery partners

Grab yesterday announced a region-wide  ‘Safer Everyday’ commitment to create a safer Southeast Asia. In Singapore, this means advocating health and occupational safety for Grab driver-partners and delivery-partners.

According to a press release, to make this vision a reality, Grab has deepened partnerships with various government agencies in Singapore.

Key initiatives covered include:

A Health and Safety Carnival for Grab drivers and delivery-partners

Held at The Star Gallery, the one-day carnival included activities such as CPR/AED Awareness and Training conducted by the Unit for Pre-Emergency Care (UPEC) under the Ministry of Health to equip partners with important first aid skills and road safety education by Traffic Police.

This is the first of a year-long series of occupational safety events, which include free health screenings and coaching sessions, and road safety training programmes.

Health screenings and regular health coaching sessions

In partnership with the Health Promotion Board, Grab will be providing health screenings and regular health coaching sessions on issues such as ergonomics risk factors, fatigue and stress management, and chronic disease management.

Through the partnership, the ride sharing firm turned everyday superapp aims to promote a healthy lifestyle among its driver-partners by providing them a more holistic healthcare and partner care programme.

Smart driver fatigue model

Grab is also building a smart driver fatigue model that will make use of an algorithm to detect when drivers are potentially tired and automatically push out in-app messages to remind drivers to take a break.

The algorithm will not only take into account the number of hours the driver has been on the road, but also includes telematics data, driver’s profile, time of day, rest between shifts and total number of bookings accepted.

Lim Kell Jay, head of Grab Singapore, said: "Safety on the road begins with good health. We understand how draining it can be for our drivers and delivery-partners when they spend hours on the road to serve our customers. By ensuring their well-being, we hope our drivers and delivery-partners can stay safe on the road so that they continue to have sustainable income-earning opportunities to improve their lives and provide for their families."

Educating delivery-partners about the Active Mobility Act and Safe Riding Programme

With GrabFood growing in popularity since its launch earlier this year, the number of delivery-partners who utilise Personal Mobility Devices (PMDs) and bicycles to do the food deliveries has also increased.

To ensure that GrabFood delivery-partners are conscious of the space they share with other road users and pedestrians, Grab has partnered with Unique Speed, LTA’s appointed training provider, to educate delivery-partners about the Active Mobility Act and Safe Riding Programme.

Lim said: "We recognise that more can be done to improve awareness of safe riding practices and promote proper code of conduct for riding and PMD usage in Singapore. As the number of cyclists and PMD users continue to grow in Singapore, we want to do our part to improve the safety of our delivery-partners and fellow commuters in Singapore."

Apart from these initiatives, Grab has also unveiled its ‘Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap’, comprising product enhancements that aim to raise transport safety standards for the industry. As part of the roadmap, Grab will double its investments in safety measures by end of 2019.

Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder of Grab, said: "The Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap is an extension of Grab’s current efforts in Southeast Asia, where we are the only major player to invest in foundations like a 24/7 customer support centre, number masking and stringent driver background checks and verification. We’re not going to compromise on our users’ safety, and that’s why even as Grab has grown much larger, safety remains a core part of our DNA and it was an easy decision to double our investment into safety next year."

The product enhancements in the Roadmap are guided by four safety principles:

  • Know who you ride with:  More transparency and peace of mind for everyone through authentication for both passengers and drivers, as well as more rigorous driver background checks that include criminal records and inspections on dormant driver accounts.
  • Get help when you need it: The Share My Ride and Emergency SOS features currently available on the passenger app will be extended to drivers where they can share their live location with loved ones.
  • Build new and safer habits: Grab's analytical tools allow the app to help drivers understand how they drive and where they can improve. The driver fatigue monitoring system will send reminders based on how long a driver has been active without rest in between trips. Drivers also regularly receive telematics reports on their driving patterns like speeding, acceleration and braking, and more parameters will be added over time. Since the rollout of telematics, there has been a 50% reduction in speeding incidents and 20% reduction in hard braking and sudden acceleration, which are potential causes of road accidents.
  • Protected at every touchpoint: Safety on the Grab platform is comprehensive, with robust app fraud detection, secure transaction mechanism, and data protection.

Photo / 123RF

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