Komsan Chiyadis
GrabFood delivery-partner, Thailand
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Audio recordings for ride safety
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March 8, 2023
If you’re in a Grab ride in Malaysia, you might see a new feature allowing you to toggle on an audio recording of your ride.
This feature is now available nationwide, and started with a pilot in Malaysian states Penang and Johor Bahru in October last year. There are plans to bring this to other markets in the region soon.
AudioProtect was conceptualised to help raise safety and encourage comfortable interactions during rides, and helps as a record post-incident to determine what happened and identify a better response.
When safety incidents are reported, Grab’s customer service team will attend to the parties involved. At times, local authorities might be called in if necessary. The audio recording serves as an additional layer of support for these situations.
About 80 per cent of the 12,000 driver-partners and 4,000 passengers we surveyed across Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines prior to the rollout believed that audio recording would benefit them.
AudioProtect requires consent from both driver-partner and passenger for audio recording to be activated. It will be activated as long as both parties have enabled the feature.
Passengers will be prompted to enable AudioProtect when they book a ride. The feature can also be toggled on or off in the safety settings, which will enable or disable the function for the subsequent ride onwards.
The team will continue to measure the effectiveness of AudioProtect, and will monitor metrics such as opt-in rates, and whether the feature has supported incident reports.
In the process of rolling out the feature, we worked with local regulators to ensure compliance with data privacy acts across the region.
Recordings will also be encrypted and accessible only to Grab-authorised personnel, law enforcement officials and government authorities in the event that a safety incident is reported.
The audio recording files will be stored in the user’s device for up to five days, after which they will be permanently deleted should there be no incident reports.
If a safety incident is reported, the recording of the ride will be uploaded and stored in Grab’s servers to assist with investigations. These recordings will be stored for up to six months and will subsequently be automatically deleted unless ongoing investigations require the file to be retained for a longer period of time.
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Komsan Chiyadis
GrabFood delivery-partner, Thailand
COVID-19 has dealt an unprecedented blow to the tourism industry, affecting the livelihoods of millions of workers. One of them was Komsan, an assistant chef in a luxury hotel based in the Srinakarin area.
As the number of tourists at the hotel plunged, he decided to sign up as a GrabFood delivery-partner to earn an alternative income. Soon after, the hotel ceased operations.
Komsan has viewed this change through an optimistic lens, calling it the perfect opportunity for him to embark on a fresh journey after his previous job. Aside from GrabFood deliveries, he now also picks up GrabExpress jobs. It can get tiring, having to shuttle between different locations, but Komsan finds it exciting. And mostly, he’s glad to get his income back on track.
