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Luckily, a new app “Flag”, created by former NUI Galway (NUIG) student Richie Commins has safety at its core

It’s an idea that started out as the premise for a college assignment, when Richie Commins’s class was asked to solve a problem for students. He came up with the idea for a taxi service that had safety as its priority. You can’t always rely on public transport and you just never know how safe it is. There are always careless drivers on the road. Whether you got involved in a road accident while you were on the bus or in an Uber, where you looked into a specialist Uber Accident Attorney to help settle this case, being safe on the road is and should be a priority for everyone who gets behind the wheel. In his third year he chose to work on his idea further with Blackstone Launchpad and it was from here the first prototype of the service was developed. Then, in his final year, instead of working with a pre-existing company for the purposes of his final-year project, he enquired whether he could pitch his idea to his class.

Richard Commins explains that Flag is targeted specifically at students and is the first app to enable users to order taxis and pay without having cash, card or a phone. “The aim is to enable people travel from A to B without any other physical commodity”, he says. Phone batteries are notoriously temperamental and there are bound to have been instances where a student wishing to order a taxi has been left in the predicament of having their phone run out of juice or they’ve lost their wallet. Uniquely, Flag’s “wallet-less” feature enables users to simply hail a taxi off the street and enter their pin into the driver’s Flag account. The added verification processes for creating an account include a photo ID ensures that drivers can rest assured there are no mistaken identities. For other occasions when you wish to pay by cash, the app works in a similar fashion to MyTaxi where you confirm your location and a licenced driver is sent to pick you up.

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