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Take back the night - deterring assault

Doug Horrigan | 10.10.2007 12:12 | Culture | Education | Social Struggles | London

Helping to deter assaults by using a cameraphone

Hi,

Over the past few years my wife and I have become increasingly worried about the increasing frequency, nature and ferocity of assaults, particularly those against women.

My wife works in the city and occasionally has to work late or socialise with work colleagues, this means that she has to travel to the station either in a cab or by foot.

It’s not too much of a problem walking in the summer, but dark winter nights are a different matter so she would take a cab.

Usually you can get a black cab fairly quickly and these are generally quite safe, but sometimes she would have to wait around alone on deserted streets so occasionally she would take a passing minicab.

We thought that it would be a good idea to send a photo of the driver to me but when we tried we always had problems, either the message didn’t arrive or I had to try and retrieve it from a website somewhere, so in the end we gave up.

Matters came to a head last year when the five girls were murdered in Ipswich. Its not a million miles from Ipswich to the city and it’s very easy for a maniac to jump on a train and attack girls somewhere else, so we thought it was about time someone did something about it and try to make the streets a little safer.

Early this year we were fortunate enough to take a long holiday travelling around Australia and during this time I thought up the Bakoff service.

When we returned home I started to investigate how I could implement the idea, what phone services were available, how much server space I would need, how much the various services would cost, how long it would take to set up etc.

We keep the price as low as possible; we would rather have people use the service than risk an assault just for the sake of a few pence.

Bakoff can be used by anyone, anytime, such as deterring fake callers like utility company ‘officials’ etc.

Full details can be found on our website at www.bakoff.co.uk



Doug Horrigan
- e-mail: doug@bakoff.co.uk
- Homepage: http://bakoff.co.uk

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Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

some people

10.10.2007 15:31

may take offence if you attempt to photograph them

Hmmm


Hmmmm Again....

10.10.2007 15:42

Great idea to start up such a service. But does it not allready exist? I have recolection of a advert drive based around texting the cabs licence plate details. Cant rember the details.

Mat


Well done

10.10.2007 17:47

I tried to start a similar service about five years ago for hitchhikers to text the car registration of their lifts to a phone company. I spec'ed it and passed the idea for free but it floundered simply as the phone companies never saw a worthwhile profit from it, as most people can do this anyway to friends or family yet don't. Many hitchers I consulted at the time don't simply because they don't want to worry anyone and said they would consider doing so if it was cheap enough.
So well done for setting up a more comprehensive service yourselves. For people without camera-phones though I'd suggest you do also incorporate a service where people can text or phone their journey details to you.

Danny


personal safety advice

10.10.2007 23:16

went on a personal sagety workshop where one piece of advice was that if you find you have to get into an unlicensed mini-cab politely let the driver know that you are texting his number plate to your partner/parents/flat mate as requested by them, make out that its nothing against them, just that one of your friends was assaulted and your partner/etc. want to make sure. if you see any hesitation on their part, not worth the risk getting in...

...


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