Leftists have said that feminism is “incompatible” with capitalism, but women are turning to the free market to create a female-only ride-sharing alternative to Uber.
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The increase in sexual assault claims – made by women to the popular taxi service – has reportedly reached an all-time high, and BuzzFeed even managed to track down screenshots from the Uber database highlighting 5,827 mentions of rape, and 6,160 mentions of sexual assault. Surprisingly, its founder is not a former female passenger who felt unsafe in an Uber-as many of us have-but Michael Pelletz, an Uber driver who had a revelation when he felt threatened by a passenger.
As it says on the company’s website: “One thought kept coming up in his head: ‘What if I was a woman?’…’How would a woman handle that situation, especially when I was so nervous myself?'”
Chariot for Women, an innovating women-only-ride-sharing service app, will be launched in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 9. In addition, when an app user requests a ride, a safe word pops up on the driver and passenger’s phone. While Uber, which just saw one of its drivers allegedly kill six people in MI and agreed to pay nearly $40 million after lawsuits questioned background checks for its drivers, continues to draw criticism about safety, Pelletz is launching a competitor to keep women safe that raises significant legal questions about equal access. To ensure that passengers are riding the correct vehicle, they need to declare the same code that appears on both the passenger and the driver’s smartphones.
Women’s safety when using Uber has been called into question. The new service, deemed Chariot for Women, will only be able to employ female drivers, which will give female passengers peace of mind.
Pelletz said he got the idea for Chariot while… driving for Uber. “Because of the hundreds of thousands of women who are going on our website and really appreciate what I’m doing, it is a fear”. “We hope other ride share companies follow in our footsteps to make it safer”. Passengers even have the ability choose to which charity benefits from their “simple ride across town”.
When your chariot arrives, there will be a woman behind the wheel.
The company told ABC News they received an overwhelmingly positive response from customers but had to temporarily shut down, both because they could not meet the demand and because of accusations of discrimination from men looking for a ride.
Chariot for Women will launch in Boston this month and plans to soon launch in other cities across the U.S.
He told TechCrunch he looks forward to possible legal challenges associated with overtly excluding men from the hiring process.
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The woman-focused start-up, however, is the brainchild of a man: Uber driver Michael Pelletz.
