The ride-hailing service Bolt has introduced Trusted Contacts, a feature that lets drivers and passengers add friends or family to their accounts. This way, Bolt’s Safety Team can get in touch with them in the event that the account holder is unavailable.

The business made this claim in a statement on Saturday.

This innovation, which is a component of Bolt’s commitment in safety improvements, attempts to speed up reaction times to security events, Ride Check alerts, and Emergency Assist requests.

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Bolt, which has invested €100 million over three years to boost safety measures, claimed that the new function expands on existing capabilities like Ride Check, Share Location, and Emergency Assist.

Emergency Assist quietly notifies security partners or emergency services, Ride Check identifies anomalies in trips, and Share Location allows real-time tracking.

Bolt’s General Manager’s statement 

The General Manager at Bolt, Osi Oguah, said, “With Trusted Contacts, we aim to build on our Safety Team’s existing efforts by ensuring we can quickly escalate a Ride Check notification or Emergency Assist request to a friend or family member if we can’t get a hold of the Bolt account holders, themselves.”

“It’s part of our ongoing investment in safety through new products, features, and our dedicated in-house specially trained safety team to ensure that we can continue to improve the safety ecosystem of the Bolt app, offering drivers and riders a high-quality ride-hailing experience.”