SafeAutoRickshaw.com, a new initiative by Viswanath Seetharam and Bangalore City Traffic Police Force, hopes to solve some of the problems between autorickshaw drivers and commuters by making auto rides easier and safer in the city.
The basic premise of this website is quite simple, you register on safeautorickshaw.com by entering your name and email address, choose the beginning and the end point and click “Submit”. The website will then furnish you a detailed list of autorickshaw drivers available in that area along with their phone numbers, using which you can directly book a ride by contacting them.
The website also features a dedicated profile for every driver with their photo, which provides details like registration number, license and home address, which could come in handy, to recover any valuables commuters may forget in the vehicle.
Viswanath Seetharam said these details are initially checked for authenticity and correctness before making it public. In addition, the drivers also undergo a series of tests and are reportedly trained on courtesy.
Launched on 28th Aug 2011, Viswanath said the auto drivers have been very receptive of this initiative and they already have 28 drivers onboard with more than 100 drivers waiting in the pipeline. They also plan to launch a call centre in four months using which a commuter can give his current location and find out the nearest driver available. Viswanath said:
We are planning on recruiting two physically challenged people for this call centre. The commuter can call the centre and give the start and end points. The call centre will be able to connect the commuter to the nearest driver. This will be set up in 3 to 4 months.
This initiative seems quite impressive on paper but it does come with its own doubts regarding the implementation. Firstly, there is no information on whether this service uses Global Positioning system (GPS) in any form. Quite honestly, it would be meaningless to run the service without it, since auto drivers keep plying their vehicles on different routes throughout the day.
Another issue is the willingness of the driver to pick up the passenger and drive to the destination without any fuss. i.e. Will the drivers under this initiative accept all commuters or do they have choice to reject some, based on their interest to drive to that specific place, which has become a quite common phenomenon of late.
[Source: Times Of India]
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