Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], July 17 (ANI/BusinessWire India): The pandemic may have slowed down traffic from the general public but it has not reduced the number of road accidents that India has seen.
While most families have been staying comfortable in the safety of their homes, there’s one demographic that has been out & about at all hours of the day (and night) in spite of the pandemic – the delivery heroes of Zomato, Swiggy, Rapido, Amazon and the like. Dashing across the city, picking up food, groceries or even just delivering our parcels!
Somehow, in spite of the lack of “common traffic” on the roads, the accident reports from major cities have not reduced proportionally. In fact, far more delivery executives are meeting with accidents now on the way to making deliveries.
In an incident early in 2021, the Bengaluru commissioner of police, tweeted in response to an incident report, stating that food & grocery delivery companies ought to be held responsible for the safety of their employees. It was also seen that a few years ago, a delivery agent met with an accident which caused other employees of the company to go on strike to ensure adequate safety measures for other delivery executives.
With the increase in the reliance on these delivery applications during the pandemic, it calls for a need to proactively ensure the safety of the employees.
Whether the system is to be blamed for putting these execs on a clock for deliveries is up for debate. But what can be said with absolute certainty is that there needs to be measures put in place, to reduce the number of road accidents involving these executives. Furthermore, it needs to be ensured that these executives are not risking their lives on their daily job.
Vicara has developed a plug & play hardware module to ensure the safety of delivery executives while they’re on the job. This system can be easily retrofitted into helmets or bikes and will constantly track the rider’s motion data to identify critical incidents like a fall or crash. When (and if) a crash or fall is detected, the system sends an alert via a connected mobile app to emergency services. It can also be integrated into delivery apps to alert the company itself so they may ensure that their employee is taken care of.
Vicara is also working on a cloud-based version of this solution that requires no additional hardware & relies solely on readily available sensors in the mobile phones that delivery executives use.
Additionally, Vicara will provide a gamified layer on top to proactively ensure that riders stay safe. The add-on layer would feature a rider safety dashboard where the delivery executives are rewarded for safe driving practices & are notified in case repeated rash driving is registered on the application.
Vicara aims to work alongside major food & delivery companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, Dunzo, Amazon, Rapido, Flipkart, Delhivery & so on, over the next year to create a truly tech empowered delivery workforce.
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