Companion, a new app for both iPhone and Android, intends to keep users safe as they walk home at night.
Leaving the bar to walk home, wanting a decent sleep after a night out. On the way back I see a friendly acquaintance. He offers me help. “Stay at my place until sunset, the street is dangerous in the middle of the night.” I accept. Big mistake. In the room bottles, cans, clothes, and cigarette butt wasteland. “I apologize for the mess,” he says smirking. His intentions were made clear shortly thereafter: ‘Let’s have sex’. He was very insistent. The line separating relative security from danger was very thin. If the situation were to degenerate, I would have lost the battle, and this is a position women are put in the world over.
Companion: the app that keeps you safe
Speaking with men and women, there isn’t one who hasn’t suffered some kind of various, different aggression, from the tiny ones to physical abuse and rape.
Walking alone at night can be dangerous, but with an app like Companion, you can use your smartphone as a safety web. As someone who’s been harassed, I’m pretty wary about walking alone at night. If you are one of those pretending to be on the phone with your mom or partner just in case something happens, this may be the app you were looking for.
Companion makes you safer by notifying a friend of your trek and updating them on it. All you have to do is enter a destination and select contacts to be your ‘Companion’. Those companions monitor your progress as you make your way home from Point A to Point B.
Get home in one piece
“If you start running, don’t make it to your destination on time, have your headphones yanked out or your phone falls to the ground, we will check in on you to make sure everything is okay” the developers said.
“If you don’t respond in 15 seconds, we will automatically alert your Companions”.
With Companion you can also report areas “that make you uneasy” on your campus for instance by simply tapping the “I Feel Nervous” button. What’s more, according to Life Hacker, if you have an emergency, you can call 9-1-1 with two taps in the app.
Cell Phone Tracking
GOOD magazine writes that for many of us the phrase “cell phone tracking” evokes images of “police surveillance, or NSA snooping”; yet Companion represents another side to our smartphone’s ability to locate our every move. This time for the right reasons.
What do you think of Companion? Any safety tips you would like to share? Write your experiences in the comments section below.
