SINGAPORE: A woman in Singapore recently posted a video on TikTok of a Grab ride where she could be seen growing more and more uncomfortable due to the remarks the driver was making.
“Oh my God. I love Cantonese girls. They’re so good-looking, man,” he can be heard saying at one point.
At another, he tells her that Cantonese is “a very sexy language” to learn.
Sarah Lim (@sarxh.lim), a 20-year-old student, wrote in the text overlay of her July 12 video that she did not know how to react to the driver, adding that she felt not only uncomfortable but even a bit disturbed.
“I posted this vid as a reminder to be safe and wary. I wanna spread awareness that this isn’t okay,” she wrote.
Ms Lim explained in her caption that this happened as she was on her way to work, and during the ride “the convo started getting weirder and weirder,” which is why she decided to record it “in case he said anything out of line.”
She also described the driver as an “uncle” in her caption, which suggests that he may have been significantly older than she is.
The recording would also give her evidence in case she needed to report what happened.
Ms Lim also explained that in awkward situations, she usually just laughs it off or smiles, and added that she could have just put her headphones on to prevent the conversation from getting more uncomfortable.
“He was asking me quite a bit of personal questions before I started filming – stuff like how I made his day (said it several times), I’m so interesting, and I just overall felt uneasy,” she wrote.
She added that she was unsure at the time whether the driver had been out of line, but when she told her parents and friends, they agreed that there had been something “a bit off” with how the driver spoke to her, which led Ms Lim to report the incident.
She gave the driver the benefit of the doubt, wondering if the driver was just trying to be nice “but it just came out wrong.”
In a comment, Grab apologised to Ms Lim through a representative named Lea.
“Hi Sarah, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Feeling unsafe or uncomfortable is never okay. We’ve got your report logged under case CAS-100065525179. Please know that our driver team is already looking into this and taking action as we speak. Rest assured, someone from our safety team will still call you this evening to get the details from you and assist you further.”
Other commenters on the video affirmed what Ms Lim felt, expressing that the driver’s behaviour was “creepy” and also made them uncomfortable.
Some who commented were drivers themselves. They said they would never speak to female passengers in the way the driver in the video was speaking. /TISG
Read also: Grab driver sparks outrage after claiming he won’t speak English to Chinese passengers
