An app-based car service, Careem UAE will say no to those passengers, who are not ready to buckle up and wear their seat belts.

Christian Eid, General Manager of Careem UAE, said that,“Careem has empowered its [drivers] to refuse passengers who choose not to buckle-up. In short, if you don’t buckle-up, we will choose not to provide an unsafe trip. Though this might sound drastic, we hope our passengers will value their safety as much as we do and hope that our community will welcome this bold move.”

Careem UAE was founded in 2012. It is being operated across 27 cities in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.

“Based on a dip-stick survey we conducted last month with 259 respondents, 98 per cent of passengers in chauffer driven cabs said they buckled up in the front seat while only 56.7 per cent always wore their seat belts while sitting in the back seat. That is a very alarming number,” Thomas Edelmann, founder and managing director of RoadSafety UAE said.

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Nandini