00:00For those 22 minutes, I genuinely believed that I was in life-threatening danger.
00:04I know that 22 minutes later we found out that he was a contractor and that I was safe,
00:08but my body went through the belief. It was 10pm on a Tuesday night when
00:15comedian Laura Johnston's car broke down on the way back from a gig, leaving her stranded
00:21on a quiet road in regional New South Wales. So I call roadside assistance, they say 120-minute
00:27wait. I go, sweet, can do that, and I chill in my car. 20 minutes later a random car pulls
00:33up
00:34really fast and parks directly next to me. I freak out because I'm all alone and it's
00:39nighttime in a small town and this is the only other person that I've seen in a long time.
00:45A guy gets out of his car and comes up to my driver's side door, aggressively motions for me to
00:51open
00:51my door or put down my window. He says, I'm NRMA, and I go, identification please, like prove to me,
00:58verify that you are with NRMA. He ends up swearing at me, he ends up going, well you, and then
01:04storms
01:04back to his car and yells over his shoulder, you're just going to have to wait until the guys from
01:09Canberra come now. Which, given that his back window was broken and he had no branding and I
01:15hadn't received a phone call or a text letting me know that he was on his way. Terrifying to hear,
01:20because what do you mean the guys, plural, from Canberra are coming to my location where I am stuck
01:25in my car. Unfortunately, the 27-year-old comedian's story is not unique. Since making her story public,
01:33many have come forward with their own harrowing accounts of becoming stranded on regional and rural
01:40roads. I've been in a similar situation in regional WA. As a single mum that travels to rural locations
01:47regularly, I would like to be safe. The roads I travel have a large amount of missing people
01:53last seen nearby. I don't want to be a statistic. As a 20-year-old woman, travelling alone at night
02:00in
02:00country Victoria for work, my car broke down and was not drivable. I was lucky that the breakdown service
02:07people were so kind. So Laura started a petition on Change.org in the hopes of convincing roadside
02:15assist companies to implement a simple solution. She's asking that the companies introduce a unique
02:22verification code system that contractors can quote upon arrival to ensure they are who they say they
02:29are. It's a similar system that has already worked well for rideshare drivers. I ended up having
02:36a meeting with the CEO and the head of roadside assistance of NRMA. They, in that meeting, said
02:43that they were committed to adopting a code, which is what I wanted. Yay! And so far, her advocacy has
02:49already led multiple companies to introduce the new safety procedure.
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