TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
EDITORIAL: Safety matters most
A criminal act involving a driver should also justify stricter supervision on the part of the government to implement its regulation regarding ride-hailing apps.
Change Size
A criminal act involving a driver should also justify stricter supervision on the part of the government to implement its regulation regarding ride-hailing apps. (Shutterstock/-)
S
afety is one of the primary considerations when choosing public transportation. The booming ride-hailing business offers consumers a myriad of options, but the recent robbery and murder of a ride-haling passenger in Bogor, West Java, underlines the invaluable price of safety.
Within 24 hours after the wedding organizer’s body was found near a housing complex in Cibinong on Sunday morning, the police in Bogor arrested twins, one of whom is a ride-hailing driver, and named them as suspects. The police say the brothers allegedly strangled their passenger, a South Jakarta resident, to death after she could not withdraw Rp 20 million (US$1,460) from an ATM.
Kudos to the police for their rapid response, but the case should put pressure on ride-hailing providers to improve their safety standards as part of their business responsibility, or else they will lose the coveted public confidence.
A criminal act involving a driver should also justify stricter supervision on the part of the government to implement its regulation regarding ride-hailing apps. The regulation, which has been revised in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling, requires drivers, among others, to possess a special driver’s license for public transportation and to undergo roadworthy tests (KIR), and for ride-hailing service providers to operate under corporate bodies or cooperatives.
The latter is aimed at facilitating the mechanism to hold ride-hailing companies responsible for complaints over poor service or crimes involving drivers they have recruited. Perhaps the recent murder could have been prevented if the ride-hailing company had thoroughly scrutinized its applicants during recruitment.
Sunday’s murder is not the first criminal act to have targeted ride-hailing app passengers. Last January, a female passenger was the victim of an armed robbery committed by a ride-hailing driver in Bandung. The police were quick to arrest the driver, who turned out to have misused the account of the real driver after he had been suspended due to multiple violations a few months earlier.
The police also arrested a ride-hailing driver early last month for an alleged sexual attack on a female passenger in Bandung and another female passenger reported ridehailing driver to the Makassar Police in October last year for attempted rape.
As crimes in general are instigated by intention or opportunity, ride-hailing providers, like taxi companies, have set up a system to prevent both intention and opportunity from arising. But as these several cases have shown, the current system exposes loopholes.
For passenger safety reasons, conventional taxi operators bar their drivers from directly contacting customers when it comes to reservations. The operators also select their drivers through tests. Those mechanisms are absent in ride-hailing services.
Restricting ride-hailing services due to the crimes perpetrated by a few drivers is by no means wise. It’s more important to encourage them to develop apps that ensure passengers’ safety.
