Every day, a growing number of women seek alternative means of transportation in all parts of the country.
But more than just getting around, women also look for safety, comfort, and the convenience of being served by female drivers to avoid possible embarrassment.
With this audience in mind, Lady Driver emerged, a transportation app that works similarly to Uber, 99, Cabify, and many others.
Lady Driver’s distinguishing feature is that it was created and designed entirely by a woman, exclusively for women.
The app’s creator, Gabriela Correa, came up with the idea of offering this type of service after being harassed by a taxi driver.
Because of the embarrassment and trauma, and with the goal of preventing similar situations for other women, Gabriela created the app so that only women can be drivers and also users of the service. Men are accepted on rides only if they are accompanying a female user.
For now, Lady Driver was available only in the city of São Paulo and in some regions of Rio de Janeiro, but the idea is to expand the app-based service to several other Brazilian cities and states.
According to the team responsible for the Lady Driver app, there is a rigorous screening process for drivers, both private drivers and the cars themselves that will be used in the service. This is one of the ways to offer users greater safety, while also taking their physical integrity into consideration.
When registering a user, it is necessary to prove that the person is actually a woman. Therefore, in addition to the required documents, such as CPF and personal data, the user takes a ‘selfie’ photo to show that the registration truly belongs to a woman.
How does Lady Driver work?
The Lady Driver app works very similarly to other transportation apps. The user enters the pickup location address and the destination address, and then the fare for the trip is shown on the screen, as well as the drivers available in the region where the user is located.
The entire route is displayed on a map in the app so the user can follow everything in real time until reaching the destination. The app is available for download on Android and iOS systems in two versions: Lady Driver Passenger and Lady Driver Driver. Just choose the version you want to register for and follow the instructions.
Although innovative, because it is a new app, Lady Driver still presents some inconveniences that should be improved by its developers. One of the major drawbacks of the Lady Driver app is its limited service area, as well as the number of available drivers registered in the app; this often means that a trip is not completed because there is no driver available.
Other problems reported with the app are some bugs in the system itself that end up starting and canceling a ride without the user’s request.
