Taxi-service aggregation app Ola was at the receiving end of a controversy after one of its drivers drove into a pavement with a passenger. The driver was reportedly drunk. The passenger suffered spinal cord injuries.
On Wednesday morning, Roopa Wilson, who is a resident of Jalahalli, booked an Ola cab for her husband Wilson John, to travel from Kodigehalli to Jalahalli. The cab picked her husband up, but within a few minutes she received a message on her mobile stating the bill for the trip, Rs.110.
Knowing that the cab could not have covered the 7 km distance at that high speed, Roopa called her husband to check if he was all right.
Bangalore Mirror report quoted Roopa saying, “I called up my husband and got to know his cab had met with an accident and several passers-by were helping him out of the vehicle.”
Speaking to the newspaper and reconstructing the sequence of events, Roopa said after travelling some distance, the cab hit the pavement and stopped short of ramming into the nearby electric transformer. The cab driver was under the influence of alcohol. My husband ended up with injuries on his spinal cord."
Ola responded to the issue saying, "We suspended the driver from the Ola platform within minutes of receiving the feedback from the customer. We have also extended complete support to the customer by sharing all necessary information on the driver to initiate any formal complaint with the authorities," said the newspaper report.