Safer journeys — Introducing the Bolt Safety Kit

Our mission has always been to connect you with affordable rides at the tap of a button. However, at the heart of this mission is to provide every member of our community with even safer Bolt rides.

We asked, you answered, and we listened 

After getting your responses, we went straight to work and created a new and improved Bolt Safety Kit.

98.6% of riders said they’d feel safer if they had access to an emergency button in the app. In response, we’ve installed an emergency assist button in partnership with Namola allowing you to connect with first responders in the unlikely event that something should go wrong on your trip.

You can access the SOS button by tapping on the green shield icon on the map, then select the emergency assist icon from the safety toolkit window. You’ll be connected directly to the authorities. Please make sure you turn your location services on so that your location is easily identifiable.

100% of riders said they’d feel safer if the driver that arrives to collect them always matches the driver shown in the app. As a result, we’ve added additional measures to our driver authentication process (in addition to the stringent registration process already in place).

When requesting a ride, you receive the driver’s photo, name, car make/model, and license plate number. The best way to ensure that you’re getting into the right car is to make sure your driver’s face and license plate match those shown in the app. We’ve now included driver profile picture expansion to make it easier for you to match the face in the profile. We ask riders to only start their trip only once all the information checks out.

We’ve also added driver selfie verification to ensure that the correct driver is using the correct profile. This feature is automatically put in place when a profile is reported for impersonation — the profile is blocked and unable to accept trips until verified with a selfie.

We asked some more, and you answered again

87.6% of riders said they’d feel more secure knowing they have comprehensive insurance protection on every ride. We’re happy to announce that every Bolt trip comes with rider trip protection that insures you and your possessions from the moment your trip begins until it ends. This is all at no extra cost to you. Read more about our on-trip cover here.

81.1% of riders said they wanted to be able to end a trip whenever they needed to. We’ve now added an option that lets you cancel active rides. This feature also ensures that you don’t get the same driver you ended a trip with when you request another. When ending an active trip, we ask the reason for cancelling — this helps us develop further solutions to make rides as safe as possible.

When you reach your destination, you can rate drivers for their service. We then use this feedback to improve future journeys. Your rating helps us to understand how the journey went, how satisfied you were, and if you have any complaints. Drivers who repeatedly receive low ratings risk losing access to the platform.

While we’re happy to introduce these additional measures in the Bolt Safety Kit, we appreciate that some issues can and may still occur. If you have any feedback or complaints you’d like to share, we encourage you to contact our Customer Support team via email or in the app so that we can help.

Thank you for helping us become safer

Your answers have helped us to continue offering the safest rides possible!

But the work hasn’t ended there…

We’ve seen that the majority of safety incidents occur when a rider gets into the wrong car. So before you ride, please ensure that you’re getting into the right car by matching your driver’s face and license plate to what’s shown in the app.

If any details don’t match, please cancel the trip and report it using the cancellation options ‘Driver/car did not match description’ and we’ll take action.

Here’s to safer rides for everyone!