The application is said to be aimed at enhancing safety for working women, children, and other vulnerable groups.
The Travel Safe (T-Safe) application, launched by the Women’s Safety Wing of Telangana Police, appears to be gaining acceptance to quite an extent within a month of its launch.
South First accessed the data — based on the Digital Situation Report (DSR), which is a statement every day by the Women’s Safety Wing — for the last month since its inception.
Specifically, the data is from 12 March — when the app was formally launched — to 6 April.
The application is said to be aimed at enhancing safety for working women, children, and other vulnerable groups. This app is reportedly accessible on basic phones and can be directly accessed through a Google search, or downloaded from app stores.
Women’s Safety Wing Additional Director General of Police (DGP) Shikha Goel told South First the reason behind such an initiative was not that crimes against women were on the rise or any incidental experience for women but to see that all genders could access the T-Safe app to experience safe travel.
Anyone can access the app, even with a basic phone. For example, users can create a four-digit passcode to initiate trip-monitoring by dialling 100 and selecting the option “8”.
Sriharish Krishna is the managing director of Krishnas Digital Technologies and Softlabs Private Limited, which designed, developed, and maintains the app.
He elaborates about it, “Every 15 minutes, the person who opts in will be monitored with calls until they reach their destination. If they answer that they are safe, our work is half completed.”
He added: “We are not forcing anybody to download the app because anyway, it is the location we are asking to share.”
The total number of trips created on the app, according to the DSR, was 4,660 on the 26 days between 12 March and 6 April — including both days.
Of them, 3,790 used a basic phone or dialled 100, 75 were through the website, and 795 downloaded the Android app.
The app also incorporates accepting and responding to SOS situations. This is activated when a user does not answer calls from police every 15 minutes, sometimes when the vehicle is not moving, or when the vehicle is moving towards a dangerous location. In all, 702 deviations turned to SOS.
In case an actual SOS situation arises, the monitoring team of the T Safe app sends the location-based police-patrolling van to track a particular vehicle. The number of those calls in the aforementioned period was 1,407, of which 419 instances turned out to be “junk”.
(Edited by Arkadev Ghoshal)
Apr 29, 2024
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