A new student service, Dash (Driving All Students Home), is making its way across the country by allowing students to get taxis even when they have no cash, bank card or phone on them while also ensuring the taxi drivers get paid.
This initiative was set up by Richie Commins, a final year Business Information Systems student in NUIG and is currently available in Galway, Cork, Carlow, Maynooth, Dundalk and Waterford.
Commins, from Claregalway, Co. Galway came up with the idea after being left in many situations himself, as a student, where he did not have the physical commodities on him at the time to pay for a taxi and get home safely.
Students can sign up to the service for free on www.projectdash.ie where they add a bank card and upload a photo of themselves. Commins designed an accessible app for taxi drivers to ensure that they are paid even if the student has nothing on them, they simply give the driver their name and 4-digit number and through the app, payment is taken care of.
DASH is currently holding promotion days on all college campuses ahead of its upcoming launch in Dublin and the service is working hard to get a substantial number of major Dublin taxi companies on board. DASH has already helped thousands of students all over the country and promotion days in Dublin have shown that the anticipation and want for the service in Dublin is huge.
Its promotion day took place in DCU on April 16th with the aim of building hype and awareness about the service ahead of its introduction to Dublin. Commins said “I want this to be an invisible network for all taxis so students don’t need to worry about having no cash on them or a phone battery dying on a night out.”
Commins’ vision is to build DASH to the point where “no matter where in the country students are, they can get from A to B safely with nothing on them but their voice.”
Colleen Brady
Image Credit: pixaby.com