[vijayshouree]

Glad that your friend had come out of it safely.

It is indeed an accident, as she mentioned in that email to ola. Accident means, an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.

I can completely understand the state of shock that she was/is in and empathize with her. Accidents can happen to anyone at any time and at any magnitude. We should be thankful to the guardian angel. Good that she had highlighted the whole thing to Ola, but the email looks like she was still in that shock while composing. Most of the paragraphs have loose ends. I am not sure what compensation she is expecting from Ola. If monetary, I am sure they might have their ways to escape.

I feel that Ola is not liable for this in any way. If someone travels in my car and met with an accident, how can they make me liable for the whole thing? In this case with Ola, as they are a company, their reputation might come down and the trust will be broken to some extent.

I suggest Ola/Uber/Any Other aggregator to periodically check the fitness of vehicles. I am not sure though as they are still in losses and might not invest more. If they plan for checking also, drivers will have their ways to fool them if needed.

[Malyaj]

Too many issues being mixed up.

I am not clear in what way people want the law to have more teeth in these matters. Loss to life and limb is covered by vehicle insurance. Mental trauma of surviving an accident is not. Moreover, mental trauma could arise out of many business transactions and aggregators do not carry out any specific activity that makes their services more prone to it. This can only be handled through the court and if the lady so wishes then she should. Existing provisions of law allow such cases to be admitted. The only additional teeth I can think of is to force cabs to prominently display a valid insurance certificate.

On 3rd August 2016 an Emirates flight from Trivandrum crash landed at Dubai airport. All passengers made it out of the aircraft alive. Emirates paid USD 7,000 to every passenger as compensation for mental trauma, even though it’s legal obligation was USD 1,750 towards loss of baggage. This earned them lot of love from the passengers. A company can choose not to receive such love from its customers and restrict compensation to what is ‘legal’. But to equate this choice to an unethical business practice is something I do not agree with.

I really wish top Indian unicorns led the way in setting examples for even foreign companies, but as V. Narayan sir has rightly said, they are chasing very different goals.

Carrying out regular checks to ensure that cabs are mechanically well maintained is a good business practice but has little to do with law. If this was to be enforced by law, it would require an army of inspectors and we would still be arguing over what is the most suitable inspection interval. We need to leave it to aggregators to self regulate themselves, which brings me to the issue of trust.

A lot has been said about ‘trust in the brand’. I trust Ola and Uber to 1) get me a cab within the promised time, 2) for their payment system to work properly, and 3) if there is minor problem then for their customer support to act timely. That is all. I have absolutely no faith that somehow their cars are inherently safe, their drivers protective angels and that they can resolve serious grievances satisfactorily. How on earth can anyone who has used cabs frequently believe that cabs are well maintained? It is so apparent that they are not. We still use them because we choose to ignore these deficiencies for practical concerns. But when something bad happens, we claim that our ‘trust has been broken’. We are lying only to ourselves.

[dicor]

Originally Posted by Pancham

This is the most ridiculous thing I have read on the internet today. You sir are in a different world altogether. Let me tell you this sir. 'People' were right and you were wrong.

There are some very important but basic points people need to understand here.

The cab has a OLA sticker on it and it is not road side kaali-peeli cab. It is an OLA cab. The passenger doesn't care/does't know about the business model they are operating in. All that the passenger knows is it is an OLA. That is it. You advertise your brand and we trust you based on your claims.

My 70 year old non-tech savvy mother uses the OLA regularly and she doesn't know whether OLA owns the cabs or they are just an application. There is a brand which gives us trust.

Pancham da. I have two questions for you.
1. If Suzuki / Hyundai badge couldn't save car from burning, how reasonable is to expect OLA badge to save that car from burning.

2. If you would have been in OLA management, what steps would have taken to eliminate such occurrences?

Please accept my apologies if you found my original post offensive but I like to discuss solutions.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by dicor

Pancham da. I have two questions for you.
1. If Suzuki / Hyundai badge couldn't save car from burning, how reasonable is to expect OLA badge to save that car from burning.

2. If you would have been in OLA management, what steps would have taken to eliminate such occurrences?

Please accept my apologies if you found my original post offensive but I like to discuss solutions.

Malyaj's post number 47 read with my post number 23 will give you some answer. Any one on this forum who runs a successful medium sized business will know this and will be living this.

If I were the COO of Ola I would have made sure a empathetic letter and polite and sympathetic phone call got out to the lady customer ASAP. You can do this no mater what your size of operations. You do it by the culture and learned behaviour you teach your team members 6 layers down. if Ola had the right culture this would have got addressed 1 or 2 levels below the COO with courtesy and promptness and when the anger and shock has been defused the question of monetary compensation also softens. I do not know if you are exposed to the end customer in a B2C environment where you work - probably not.

[Miyata]

Originally Posted by SuvidC

I'm literally shocked while writing this.

Very unfortunate accident. Many times I've seen Ola/Uber cabs parked overnight along the road where the possibility of some rats/rodents getting to some parts of the car is extremely high.

Many cab drivers spend the night in the cab parked in such manner. They would have some dinner/snacks etc in the car too that can attract the rats.

It's possible the Ola cab in this case might have been in a good condition otherwise and some rats would have got to various parts of the car just the night before or in the recent past.

In such scenario, accidents of this nature are unavoidable and not foreseeable. There are some insurance respite options that one can avail - "Ola offers in-trip insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh for Re 1"

Glad no one was hurt. As a lawyer, she would certainly be very well aware of legalities of the case and if there is one. Win or lose that case, I do hope it'll help knock some sense of customer service and professional responsibility into the Ola management heads.

[silvercloud]

Ola in its terms and conditions, categorically secures itself against any liability arising out of any such damage.

The Karnataka on-demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016 specifies onle this one line;



Clearly Ola will not be held responsible for such untoward accidents. Additionally as per rules drivers are allowed to operate with multiple aggregators, hence they are classified as "independent contractors". This most probably removes any vicarious liability.

Coming to showing concern for customer safety as well experience; they should have at least responded to or contacted the customer. Total disregard is disconcerting.

[Joxster]

Not to add fuel to the fire (pun not intended), but another Ola cab goes up in flames in Hyderabad, and both the driver and the passenger also escape injury.

Two people traveling in an Ola cab had a lucky escape when the vehicle caught fire at Jubilee Hills on Monday night.

The incident occurred around 12.30 a.m near the South India Bank at Film Nagar in Jubilee Hills. On noticing the fire from the engine, the driver and the occupant immediately got out of the car.

A fire tender from Film Nagar fire station rushed to the spot and douse the flames. A short circuit is suspected to a reason behind the incident.

Source

Cheers