I welcome any idea that can make women be and feel safer. However, I am a little bothered by this, legal challenges set aside. In some parts of the world, women and men are not allowed to take the same buses, cannot be together in public unless they are family, and a common justification is concerns about women's safety; in a time when feminism is receding after decades of slow progress, the solution we are offered to fight discrimination is more discrimination; the 13 year old limit for males is a way to say that from that age, men become potentially dangerous and it is time for them to find their own ride; in an effort to solve problems that emerged about what sexual identity means, there are now unisex public toilets, so similarly, there will be issues about using Chariot if you identify yourself as a female but are legally a male.
On the bright side, this new service will create much-needed debates about women safety and harassment. But it seems to me it offers to fight symptoms rather than its causes (chiefly improper education). Separating women and men throws us back in a time when they were separated in most aspects of the society--which also happened to be a time infamous for its sexism.
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