At one point, you had two choices for cars: hail a cab or call a livery car service. Now in New York, you can order yellow cabs, standard livery cabs and luxury SUVs via a million apps including Hailo, Uber, Lyft and GroundLink. But one think you couldn’t do until now was order a female driver. At least via an app. You could request a woman driver through a car service, but ladies make up such a small percentage of drivers that your request may not always be met.
However, those days after over. SheRides is about to launch in the city to make women feel more comfortable about taking cars alone. It’s not about feeling afraid, it's just sometimes you don’t feel like interacting with male drivers, particularly when they ask personal questions. That’s when you’ll find us glued to our phone screen. Failing that, giving bored, monosyllabic answers usually works.
Founder Stella Mateo knows about car services. Her husband founded the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, a group that represents 30,000 yellow cab and car service drivers. She didn’t start the company just to ferry women around, but to also get more female drivers on the road – at the moment, only 1% of yellow cab drivers and 5% of livery drivers are women.
She’s already recruited over 50 women ranging in age from 21 to 70 to drive cars, partnering with car service companies who employ female drivers already. Twenty-one-year-old college student, Stephanie Rodriguez, earns about $700 a week from her driving shifts, which certainly beats a hosting gig at a restaurant in terms of earning potential.
Every time a car is ordered through SheRides, the user will be asked if there is a female in the party and, if not, they will receive suggestions of other car services. This system should hopefully keep the creeps in check who will no doubt come out of the woodwork to harass the drivers.
Oh, and forget looking for a SheRides sign in the car window to identify your vehicle; instead, women will wear pink pashminas to alert you that it’s your car. That bit is kind of lols, but whatever.
The app launches September 16 in New York City and is expected to roll out to other US cities next year.
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.