Women get their own ride-hailing service
Chariot for Women hires female drivers, won’t pick up men
While Uber and Lyft’s safety policies face a myriad of scrutiny here, the founder of a new ride-hailing service says his company fills an overlooked gap in the industry: a focus on women’s safety.
Chariot for Women, based in Massachusetts, is an Uber-like service that hires only female drivers. The intent is to give female passengers peace of mind by ensuring another woman is always behind the wheel.
Founder Michael Pelletz, who was an Uber driver for eight months, came up with the idea after he picked up a male passenger who seemed like he was on the edge of a drug overdose.
“One thought kept coming up in his head: ‘What if I was a woman?’ ” the company’s website says. “Just one bad apple behind the wheel and those women would not be safe at all; 3 a.m. in Boston is a candy store for predators.”
Besides female drivers, Chariot for Women, which is set to launch across the country April 19, will pick up only female passengers or boys younger than 13. If a woman orders the service and is with a male older than 13, Pelletz said, the male would be denied a ride.
Of the 20,000 Uber drivers in Massachusetts, 7,000 are female, said Carlie Waibel, a spokeswoman for Uber. Across the U.S., 29% of drivers who joined in fall 2015 were women. About 60% of Lyft passengers are women, and 30% of drivers are female — the highest percentage in the ride-sharing industry, said Alexandra LaManna, a Lyft spokeswoman.
More than 1,000 women have already signed up for Chariot for Women. Pelletz said his company has the most “stringent background checks in the industry” and will fingerprint every driver.
Following a series of incidents involving drivers and passengers, Boston has turned a stern eye to ride-hailing services. A big point of contention has been Uber and Lyft’s reluctance to fingerprint its drivers.
A bill currently pending in the Massachusetts Legislature is looking to regulate both Uber and Lyft by intensifying company background check policies and placing limits on surge pricing.
Although Chariot for Women’s background check policies are seemingly more strict than other ride-sharing services, Joseph Sulman, an employment law specialist based outside of Boston, told
The Boston Globe that refusing to hire men as a driver could be a potential legal problem.
According to the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, the state’s anti-discrimination laws prohibit discriminating against a potential employee on the basis of sex — except in situations where sex is a “bona fide occupational qualification,” which is a qualification employers are allowed to consider when hiring employees.
“The law is really tough on that,” Sulman told The Globe. “For gender, it’s not enough to say, ‘We really just want to have a female here because our customers prefer that to feel safer.’ ”