An all-female ride-sharing service has just launched in Toronto to give women who feel uncomfortable getting into taxis or ride shares driven by men a new alternative.
DriveHER Transportation provides ride-sharing services for women within the Greater Toronto Area using women-only drivers. Company founder and CEO Aisha Addo says she came up with the idea for the service after enduring one too many uncomfortable taxi rides with male drivers.
In one incident on a long drive, she had a driver who started out friendly, but then began asking her more and more uncomfortably intimate questions.
“I ended up having to call a friend to stay on the phone with me until I got home,” Addo told CTV’s Your Morning.
She wondered how many other women had gone through something similar, or who didn’t have anyone to call, or who worried what might happen if they fell asleep in the back of a taxi or ride.
According to DriveHER, men account for 85.1 per cent of drivers within the taxi industry. DriveHER is hoping to change that using female drivers who have undergone a screening test and background check.
So far, the company has a licence to operate only in Toronto, but Addo has plans to expand throughout Canada.
To use the service, women only have to download the app from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The company never uses “surge pricing” during busy periods, instead using a flat rate “to keep fares affordable for our riders and worthwhile for our drivers,” it says.
Men will be allowed to use the service, the company says, but only if they are accompanying female passengers -- and if the driver is comfortable with it.
Addo says one of the questions they’re still trying to work out is how to ensure that all clients are actually women. She says it will be up to drivers to flag users who aren’t who they say they are.
“The driver is the one who makes the final call and lets us know. So if someone orders a ride and they’re not a woman, the driver would alert us and we would look into their account,” she said.
She added that the service is open to trans women and people who identify as women.
Addo was asked what she would say to those who say women already have the option with other ride-sharing services or taxis to refuse a ride with drivers who make them uncomfortable.
“I would say we should not shame women for having to need a service like this. Instead of criticizing it, become an ally,” she said.
“Recognize that violence against women is real and the fear that women sometimes have when going into taxis is real and it’s good for them to have options.”
