• Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap comprises product enhancements that aim to eliminate preventable incidents, encourage safer user habits and drive long-term changes in road behaviour
• Grab partners with Mandalay Region Traffic Police and other government agencies across Southeast Asia to address each country’s top transport safety concerns
• Will double investment in safety measures in 2019

 Singapore and Mandalay, Myanmar, 16 October 2018 — Grab, the leading Online-to-Offline (O2O) mobile platform in Southeast Asia, today unveiled its ‘Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap’, comprising product enhancements that aim to raise transport safety standards for the industry. This includes measures specifically aimed at changing user safety habits – such as driver fatigue monitoring and telematics reports for drivers to learn their driving patterns and identify how to drive more safely – to drive long-term road behaviour change and reduce the chance of incidents. As part of its ‘Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap’, Grab will double its investments in safety measures by end of 2019.

Tan Hooi Ling, Co-founder, 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 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.”

As a result, Grab’s incident rates have decreased by 40% over the last year since Q32017.

Partnering with governments to support local safety priorities

Grab has also partnered with government agencies across Southeast Asia to develop tailored, localised initiatives that address their top safety concerns. Southeast Asia contributes a disproportionately high 25% of worldwide road traffic fatalities, and the public and private sector can drive more impact and engage more people by working together.

Tan Hooi Ling said, “We’re committed to work with governments in every country that we’re in to support them in their safety priorities, so expect more to come after today’s partnership announcements.”

In Myanmar, Grab is collaborating with the Mandalay Region Traffic Police, Myanmar Police Force to host a series of road safety training workshops for Grab’s two-wheel and three-wheel driver-partners at the Lamin Driving School located in Mandalay. These workshops will cover the fundamentals of road safety and highlight best practices aimed at preventing and reducing road accident.

At these road safety training workshops, the Mandalay Region Traffic Police will be invited to facilitate educational talks about safety, traffic rules and traffic regulations.Lamin Driving School will conduct theoretical and practical driving exercises on defensive driving skills to prevent road accidents, and the dos and don’ts for drivers. All training sessions are sponsored by Grab and provided free of charge to Grab’s driver-partners.

The first road safety training workshop takes place today with a group of GrabThoneBane and GrabBike driver-partners, with subsequent sessions to follow.

“On behalf of Mandalay Region Traffic Police, Myanmar Police Force, we would like to commend Grab for taking the lead on improving transport safety standards in Mandalay. We believe this programme will help contribute to safer roads in Mandalay and give commuters better peace of mind. We look forward to collaborating with Grab and to share our knowledge about how we can educate drivers and increase awareness about road safety”, said Deputy Police Major Kyaw Kyaw Aung from the Mandalay Region Traffic Police.

 “We are extremely honored and excited to launch our Road Safety Training Workshop in collaboration with the Mandalay Region Traffic Police. We know that everyone has loved ones who care for their wellbeing and want to see them come home safely. This is why we’ve always seen it as our responsibility to improve transport safety, and the reason we continue to invest in new safety features and initiatives such as the Share My Ride app feature and more recently, providing personal accident insurance coverage for free to drivers and passengers. Today, we are going a step further by introducing a new Road Safety Training Workshop, which will encourage stronger awareness of road safety and traffic regulations in Mandalay as well as promote better driving behaviours to ensure the personal safety for drivers and passengers. We thank the Mandalay Region Traffic Police for their support and opportunity to collaborate with them,” said Alvin Loh, Acting Country Head of Grab Myanmar.

Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap

Tan Hooi Ling said, “I am glad to say we’ve raised the bar for safety standards of the overall transport industry in the region. The Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap represents the next phase into strengthening the safety of the Grab platform. Our goal is to bring to zero the number of incidents that are completely preventable, and as far as possible, reduce the number of road accidents. Key to achieving our goal is to encourage and make it easy for users to make an actual change to their road behaviour habits.”

She added, “We know the bigger we get, the more responsibility we have to put in place the right framework and measures to deliver a safer everyday for our driver-partners, and passengers and their loved ones.”

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

1. Know who you ride with:  More transparency and peace of mind for passengers through driver selfie authentication, in addition to Grab’s stringent background checks to ensure quality assurance of drivers.
2. 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.
3. 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. Grab has also started rolling out telematics in Myanmar. Drivers will  regularly receive telematics reports on their driving patterns like speeding, acceleration and braking, with more parameters to be added over time. Since the rollout of telematics regionally, 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.
4. Protected at every touchpoint: Safety on the Grab platform is comprehensive, with robust app fraud detection, secure transaction mechanism, and data protection.

Grab’s Safer Everyday is a regional campaign which aims to drive local safety initiatives across the eight countries where Grab operates. More information on Grab’s commitments and goals under the Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap can be found here:  www.grab.com/mm/safety.

Quiz session at the Safer Everyday Tech Roadmap” launch event in Mandalay on 16 October 2018