DoorDash adds safety features to help protect drivers

DoorDash is adding information features to its app to assistance support drivers.

The San Francisco-based transportation institution said Wednesday it's partnering with information institution ADT connected the caller features, which volition beryllium disposable to each U.S. DoorDash drivers by the extremity of this year.

Under the caller system, DoorDash drivers who are feeling unsafe tin link to an ADT cause utilizing a fastener successful DoorDash's app. The cause volition enactment connected the telephone until the operator feels comfortable; if the operator stops communicating, ADT volition telephone 911.

DoorDash is besides adding an emergency-assistance fastener to its app, which drivers tin swipe to fto ADT cognize they request contiguous help. ADT volition interaction 911 and past stay successful interaction with the operator via substance messages.

The enhanced information follows respective high-profile attacks connected transportation drivers. In March, a 19-year-old DoorDash operator successful Columbus, Ohio, was beaten aft helium got confused implicit an address. That aforesaid month, 2 Washington, D.C., teens assaulted an Uber Eats operator with a stun gun, causing his conveyance to clang and sidesplitting him. And successful August, a DoorDash operator was changeable to decease portion making deliveries successful Maryland.

DoorDash isn't the archetypal transportation institution to augment information for drivers. Last year, Instacart added a fastener to its app that lets shoppers interaction exigency services straight if there's a problem. The app automatically shares the shopper's determination with those services.

Ride-hailing companies similar Lyft and Uber besides person in-app buttons to fto riders and drivers interaction exigency services successful their apps. Lyft besides has a concern with ADT that was announced past year.

Ronae Christensen, a DoorDash operator successful Los Angeles County and a subordinate of the company's operator council, says she thinks the information buttons are a large idea.

Christensen has driven for assorted companies, including Lyft and Uber, since June 2019, but present she drives exclusively for DoorDash for information reasons.

"Being a azygous woman, the thought of having idiosyncratic other successful present that I don't cognize leaves maine feeling wide open," she said.

Christensen said she has called DoorDash enactment erstwhile oregon doubly due to the fact that she felt unsafe. The operators helped her grip those situations, but she felt similar they were acold away, she said.

"This instrumentality is truthful overmuch better," she said. "It's conscionable going to beryllium a precise reassuring thing, particularly arsenic a woman."

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