Ride-hailing company Lyft in June released a company safety report revealing that it recorded 4,158 incidents of sexual assault over a three-year period.

Its chief rival, Uber, has been rocked by impersonators who have assaulted or killed riders in a number of cities.

A pair of Bowling Green-based entrepreneurs – Jeremy Jacobs and Bobby Rabold – believe they have found a solution.

Jacobs and Rabold are among the partners in Florida-based Real-Time Safety Solutions, a company they think has the potential to provide a technology-based answer to safety concerns in ride-hailing as well as package and food delivery.

“I’ve been involved (in Real-Time Safety Solutions) since 2018,” Rabold said last week. “We got a patent last November that gives a corporate entity the ability to communicate with a driver in a vehicle through a smartphone app and then transmit data from the phone to a screen.”

That screen can then display such information as a confirmation code and the passenger’s name as a way to ensure riders that they are getting in the correct vehicle.

“At the end of the day, it’s very simple and very effective,” said Rabold, listed on the RTSS website as the company’s senior vice president of sales. “And it solves a problem.”

Rabold said RTSS began as a company looking to create a solar-powered “topper” on vehicles that could provide advertising.

“One thing led to another,” said Rabold, who has worked with Fortune 500 companies on providing customer loyalty and engagement programs and was instrumental in bringing the Bowling Green Trolley to the area. “We started talking about the ride share industry and the dangers of getting in the wrong vehicle.

“We evolved from the topper concept to advertising and now to the screen you see today.”

That screen immediately made Rabold think of Jacobs, whose business startups have included the Enlighten digital menu and advertising company and the Lobby Fox company that provides touch-screen kiosks that help manufacturing plants manage visitors and other lobby traffic.

“I’ve been making digital signs for years,” said Jacobs, a Leitchfield native who now operates his Eyeconic.TV company out of Western Kentucky University’s Innovation Campus. “Bobby realized they were at a place that’s in my wheelhouse. It was a logical fit.”

Such a fit that Jacobs is now a partner in RTSS.

Jacobs is not only on board with the idea of improving safety through the digital signs; he has already been busy brainstorming further uses for the technology.

“For companies like Uber and Lyft, there can be a loss of revenue when people have problems identifying the correct vehicle,” Jacobs said. “That can be fixed by making the process more efficient.”

Jacobs is also looking beyond the ride-hailing business to come up with other possible uses for the technology.

“This has applications for package delivery, drug delivery and food delivery,” he said. “Any time somebody is pulling up to a strange place, there are all these associated dangers.

“Having a screen communicating the purpose of the vehicle is just a safe way to go about it. That’s what got me excited.”

Now that the patent for the screen technology is in hand, Jacobs said RTSS can turn its attention to developing related patents and building a customer base.

“There are a whole host of patents that sort of circle this particular patent, so we’re having those discussions,” he said. “At the same time, we’re in discussion with partners to put this out in the field.”