Grab Philippines said Monday it started the in-car audio and video recording in Metro Manila as part of new security measures to protect both riders and drivers.
“The pilot study starts on Jan. 13 and will run for two to six weeks with over 180 GrabCar vehicles, of which half will be equipped with in-car cameras and the rest with audio-recording capabilities,” Grab said in a statement.
Grab said the safety and well-being of passengers and driver-partners were extremely important to the company.
“As part of our continuous efforts to improve the safety of our services and to better support our users, Grab will be conducting a small pilot study in Metro Manila to assess the effectiveness of in-car audio and video recording in incident prevention and dispute resolution,” the company said.
Grab said passengers who would be allocated a car participating in the pilot study would be notified in advance via GrabChat and would have the option to cancel the booking without any penalty.
“Audio and video recordings will be encrypted and stored securely in Grab’s database for seven days and 10 hours respectively. Recordings will only be accessed by authorized Grab representatives for investigation purposes in the unlikely event of an incident,” it said.
Grab said the audio and video recording pilot would serve as another layer of security to both drivers and passengers.
“We hope that this pilot if proven successful, will bring us even closer to our goal of zero preventable incidents on our platform,” Grab said.
The company said there is no jurisdiction that restricts them from putting up safety measures for the benefit drivers and passengers.
“But rest assured that LTFRB will be notified accordingly. The pilot is compliant with the NPC’s [National Privacy Commission’s] data privacy law,” Grab said.