What does it say about the future of public safety when governments require panic buttons in every e-hailing vehicle? South Africa has brought forward proposals to impose stricter safety requirements on e-hailing platforms. For example, vehicles must now carry visible branding, drivers must meet tighter ID requirements and every car must be equipped with a panic button linked to an emergency response service.
With police resources increasingly stretched, private sector players have spotted a gap in the market for emergency response services that help protect people and property. The future of safety is emerging as a hybrid model: blending public services with the scale, speed and innovation tech-driven solutions can offer.
These trends potentially reflect a broader shift in how societies are approaching public safety. E-hailing is one of the most regulated and politically contested parts of the gig economy. As millions of people rely on it daily, the sector often becomes a testing ground for wider trends that then spread to other industries, such as delivery, logistics and other gig platforms.
Traditionally, emergency response has been the domain of the state — police, fire and ambulance. But these systems struggle to keep up with modern realities like rapid urbanisation and population growth. In South Africa, police response times can exceed an hour in some areas, but similar delays occur worldwide, where hotlines are overwhelmed or too slow to meet the demands of fast-moving urban populations and keep people and property safe at all times.
At the same time, public expectations are rising. In a world where groceries or rides can be summoned in minutes, citizens wonder why emergency help should take hours. This mismatch between what people expect and what governments can deliver, given the limit on resources, is increasing demand for private sector solutions that can plug this gap.
South Africa is not alone. Around the world, panic buttons are becoming a standard feature across different platforms and technologies.
It’s not just e-hailing platforms that are embedded with built-in SOS functions. Mobile phones and apps related to banking, transport, insurance and personal safety are increasingly deploying one-tap emergency alerts. Wearable devices are embracing them too.
In other words, what began as an optional add-on is fast evolving into a universal expectation: that help should always be just a button away.
The Aura platform is playing a crucial role in providing the operational and technological backbone to in-app safety buttons, providing the infrastructure that underpins this new, hybrid model of public safety. When a rider or driver presses the button, the alert flows directly into an automatic dispatching platform which instantly receives critical details such as GPS location, trip data and user identity.
From there the platform contacts the user and simultaneously dispatches the nearest available private security or medical responder, who typically arrives within minutes. Riders and drivers can even track the responder’s journey in real time, ensuring full transparency and peace of mind that help is on the way.
The average response time in South Africa is just eight minutes, substantially lower than that delivered by most police forces globally. The result is literally life- saving: since its foundation in 2017, Aura has saved more than 8,000 lives, and now saves a further 50 month on month.
Government services will always remain essential for large-scale emergencies, but private companies are increasingly expected to provide the immediate response for incidents that occur within their networks.
In practice, this means platforms and devices are no longer just points of service — they are entry points into a wider safety economy, where private responders handle the first intervention before escalating to public agencies when necessary.
The new e-hailing rules in South Africa are the first step in a much bigger story: the rise of a hybrid safety economy where private platforms hold the keys to public trust. The future of public safety will not be government alone, nor private companies acting in isolation, but will be hybrid, with both the public and private sectors playing a vital role.
As this shift accelerates, the platforms and partners that move early to build fast, reliable and secure emergency response services will define what safe mobility — and safer communities — look like in the years ahead.
• Suttner is Aura’s development GM, Sub-Saharan Africa
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