This is absolutely fantastic! It is not only useful to college kids but adults as well.
I just sent link to my D. Thanks for sharing.
This fall they introduced a similar app at the Claremont Consortium called LiveSafe. http://colleges.claremont.edu/livesafe. Students can have someone virtually walk them back to the dorm (or elsewhere) but alternatively can immediately contact Campus Security who will receive their exact GPS coordinates. Also students can submit anonymous tips of suspicious or dangerous situations to Campus Security.
It is a good app, but hopefully won’t give folks a false sense of security and they will still use escort services provided as appropriate. Even if it provides notifications of suspicious activity, bad things can happen very quickly.
The summer before last, my younger daughter was doing an internship in Boston. She called me very late on a Friday night; I think it was 1 a.m. in Boston. She was walking home from a party and was a bit tipsy. She wasn’t in danger or lost; she just wanted to talk. I was quite nervous on her behalf because of her being tipsy. And I have read that being on a phone while walking is sufficiently distracting that criminals sometimes target people on phones.
Neat!