Ride-hailing apps with T-safe service to make travel safer for women in Telangana

Telangana Police's T-Safe app ensures safer rides for citizens, especially women, with innovative ride-monitoring features.

Since the Telangana Police launched Travel Safe (T-Safe), a ride-monitoring application earlier last week, citizens in the State have been experiencing safer rides. The app has hit 230 downloads on Play Store over the past five days.

Moreover, as per the data shared with The Hindu by Telangana Women Safety Wing, between March 12 and March 16, 668 trips and 456 deviations were created through the app with an average trip time of 391.2 minutes.

Also, 251 ‘Save Our Ship (SOS)‘ and 228 ‘Sent Dial 100 SOS’ were created through the app. Most were either created by users testing the app or owing to to a lack of response to verification calls, an official from the Woman Safety Wing explained.

This first-of-its-kind ride-monitoring service in India is aimed at making transit across the State safer for women, children and other vulnerable groups and has been taken well by users. “The app gives me a feeling of safety ,” said an IT employee. While many appreciated the user-friendly interface, most agreed on the improved sense of safety in their everyday commute. 

The service works cohesively with the ‘Dial 100’ police helpline number. However, a special T-Safe helpdesk has been set up under the State’s Women Safety Wing to monitor the working of the system. A pilot was carried out to fine tune various features of the app prior to its launch.

Unlike other safety apps, this service can be used even without a smartphone. A new option, ’8’, has been introduced in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu of the emergency number 100, which sends an automated link. On activation, T-Safe will monitor the journey and send a safety check trigger 15 minutes into the ride. If the user fails to respond to it, another one is sent after three minutes. In case the user fails to respond to the security triggers or there is a deviation from the original route, an alert is automatically created to initiate police response. The app sends a live tracking link to the police patrol vehicle.