An Australian woman is encouraging others to turn to the new rideshare app Shebah, claiming she can finally now get home in peace after Uber journeys left her with an “overall fear for [her] safety”.
Kat Zam, 34, booked a Shebah home from Melbourne Airport last month after returning from Bali with her partner. She told Yahoo News a string of negative experiences had her avoiding rideshares for more than two years.
“I haven’t used Uber or DiDi in such a long time because I just didn’t feel comfortable, especially late at night,” she told Yahoo. “I’ve had some weird experiences. Drivers would ask how old I was, if I had a boyfriend, one guy asked for my number. So yeah, there was just an overall fear for my safety.”
However, after hearing that Shebah only employs female drivers and prioritises safety during rides, she decided to give it a go. She said jumping in the car with a female driver who “gets it” was game-changing.
“I just felt so relieved. I can’t even explain it. I’ve never felt like that before using a rideshare thing,” she said, explaining she could simply be herself during the 30-minute car ride home.
“I’m definitely going to keep using it.”
Women and gender-diverse passengers more vulnerable in rideshares
Women experience disproportionate rates of harassment and assault in Australian rideshares, a University of Melbourne professor found during research on the topic in 2022.
Professor Bianca Fileborn said that while passengers felt safe “most of the time”, those who do experience harassment are usually women or gender-diverse passengers.
“It was more common for those [groups] to receive unwanted flirting or inappropriate questions… We also had a small portion of participants who experienced sexual or physical assault,” she told the ABC.
Yahoo News reported on an incident involving a female passenger who was subjected to a male driver exposing and touching himself while driving her back to her Adelaide home from work in 2024.
Tayla Pimlott, 26, told Yahoo she was “petrified” and admitted she feared the worst as the man masturbated less than a metre away from her. She thankfully escaped the car and vowed never to use Uber again.
“There was a part of me that thought, ‘Oh God, I could die, I could be raped, this man could touch me’,” she said. “My brain was frozen and my heart was pounding… I was petrified,” she said. Uber confirmed the driver was permanently banned from the app after Tayla reported the incident.
Shebah employs only female drivers. Source: Getty & Shebah
Shebah keen to ‘fill critical gap’ in Australian rideshare market
Shebah launched in 2017 and now has rides in many major Australian cities. With the most recent census reporting only six per cent of rideshare drivers are women, Shebah is trying to boost this in the name of female safety.
“Shebah was founded to fill a critical gap in the rideshare space — the need for greater safety for women as passengers, and financial empowerment for women as drivers,” a spokesperson told Yahoo. “For passengers, it provides the assurance of a safe and respectful journey, and for drivers it opens up economic opportunities in an industry where women have long been underrepresented.”
The rideshare company only employs female drivers, and they go through a vigorous recruitment process before they get behind the wheel, including a face-to-face interview, safety training, and the completion of a Working with Children Check and a Police Check.
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