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Rape crime catches Uber on a wrong foot

Should the booking-app be taken to task for customer safety and how much?

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Pratima Harigunani
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Amidst all the not-so-uber news headlines filling in for smartphone app Uber after a reported case of rape by one of the drivers in Delhi; agitation and debate keeps building up with every passing hour.

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While the pandora-box could not get bigger after the alleged rape report, then Gurgaon operations coming under axe, and a conspicuous lack of GPS installations and even background verification of the driver (who has incidentally been reported as a rape perpetrator in past too with Police records to top); the question of the scope of an app's responsibility keeps getting murkier.

As Forrester Research analyst Katyayan Gupta opines, Uber is not just a mobile app service. It is a business enabled by mobile and as with all businesses, customer experience should be the top priority.

Raghavendra Prasad, CEO, Appdra Software Solution Pvt. Ltd. too has the thought running in his mind since yesterday, and he has started his day by signing a petition on change.org against double standards of Uber.

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As he sees it, although largely being the driver's fault, he is disappointed with Uber cabs for neglecting basic background checks and refraining from implementing simple precautionary steps that could have helped prevent this horrific incident.

"Technology is in our genes now, while the world is dependent on our technology, we Indians are abstaining from its use. Uber has a policy of seven-years background and criminal check of the cab drivers in the US, why did they not to do in India?" he asks.

Gupta from Forrester contends that the customer experience begins, not ends, when the app connects passengers and taxis. "It goes beyond until the passenger has safely reached his/her destination. Uber and similar service providers need to think about the customer's journey holistically as customer experience hinges more on passenger safety in transit rather than being able to hail a ride."

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The sheer level of gaps and potholes that verification process entails in our country can not be shrugged here, in all fairness. Nilesh Sangoi. Chief Technology Officer Meru Cabs points out aptly in his blog that the most important challenge is how we ensure that such serial offenders and psychos are stopped at the gate and not allowed to enter the system in the first place.

"In our country, any documents like driving license, police verification etc can be forged, so the first challenge is how to verify the identity of the person with 100 per cent assurance. The second challenge is how we ensure that only the person authorised by the cab company is actually driving the cab and not any unauthorised driver who is not verified or trained by the company. Third challenge is lack of availability and access to centralised database of criminal records that can be verified.

For sure, among other alarms, the incident points a torch towards technology's own power and some blatant gaps that today's apps can be cognizant of. Prasad poignantly asserts that simple technological enhancement can put an end to most of such crimes; given his hands-on expertise in the apps-domain.

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"A simple panic button on the app can trigger the cops to find the last location of the cab. App could have a small check box to choose women traveller/older traveller/Single traveller and the cab can be monitored throughout the journey."

He suggests making it a mandatory option to women traveller/older traveller/Single traveller or any traveller to input there start point and end point through a mobile application, which under any deviation until asked by the customer can trigger an alarm to the cops/app admins. "In the current capital rape case, even though the cab driver turned of the GPS device, steps taken would give his last GPS co-ordinates. I was recently in Amsterdam, I was told that the the call girls there have a panic button and upon pressing cops arrive in 30 seconds, why cant the cabs have a panic button?"

Prasad reckons that a dedicated GPS-based real time tracking device of each cab ( other than just phone, so that even turning off of phone will still transmit the location of the cab), is available as cheap as $20 to 50.

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An automated call option should be made mandatory on completion of every ride to the person making the travel and have them to rate the driver which will help document all the travels and also generate a database to refer during an emergency, he adds.

Sangoi shares how at his organisation, the gap has been confronted so far. "We’ve been thinking hard how to use technological innovation to solve some of these complex problems and help improve overall safety of women passengers for the entire cab industry. We reached out to Sanjay Jain, who is an independent director on the board of Meru Cabs. He was the Chief Product Manager at UIDAI (better known as Aadhaar) during the initial period of design, implementation, launch and roll out on a massive scale. Aadhaar is the best example of a technology innovation to solve a complex problem for the benefit of masses and today, it is the only solution available that can provide unique identity of any person in the country." He explains how with the help of Sanjay Jain and Khosla Labs, Meru Cabs team has been able to deploy a simple app on Android phone integrated to a fingerprint scanner or an iris scanner which connects to the Aadhaar database with an open API to verify if the Aadhaar number belongs to the same person.

"There has been a large scale enrolment for Aadhaar especially in the SEC segment relevant to drivers and in the cities that we operate in. As a first step, we have started capturing and verifying the Aadhaar number of all our drivers and also helping the enrolment of drivers who do not have Aadhaar number. This will alleviate the risk of a driver entering the system with a forged driving license to a great extent."

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Over next few months Meru Cabs also appears to be exploring the option of online driver identification inside the cab every few hours before a booking is assigned through Aadhaar biometric scan. This will be a foolproof way to ensure that only the authorised person is driving the cab.

As the case continues to draw attention and anger on the dismal state of women-safety in the country, Prasad echoes what many in Cyberspace are venting too. "Instead of putting technology into use and taking precautionary steps to prevent heinous crimes, people end up blaming the girl and justifying such crimes saying she was drunk and passed out or she shouldn't have traveled alone late in the night! Uber is banned in Delhi, had this been in another country there services would be banned throughout the country."

Sangoi is strongly suggesting that the Government can take a lead in creating a centralised database of all persons with criminal background and linking them with Aadhaar number. He also beckons the collective spirit of an otherwise fiercely competitive industry: that all cab operators and aggregator companies come together and implement a centralised driver reputation agency on the lines of various credit agencies.

"If any of the company encounters a driver with criminal background or a serious safety complaint from a passenger is received, the information can then be fed into the centralised registry for the benefit of other companies.  We are keen to work with all other taxi operators and aggregators and implement these technological and process improvements for the whole industry to deliver a truly safe and secure consumer experience," as Sangoi has stressed.

The app in question and under fire - Uber, enables online booking and payment for taxis and had risen in popularity this year, but this month has ended on a rough note and right now it is apparently co-operating with the authorities in India at its best.

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