Terms of Service

1. Accepting these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and [Registered legal entity name] (“Atlas”, “we”, “us”). By creating an account or using the Atlas app you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use Atlas.

Our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines form part of these terms.

2. Who may use Atlas

You must be at least 13 years old. If you are under 18, you may only use Atlas with the involvement of a parent or guardian who agrees to these terms on your behalf. If you use Atlas while driving a vehicle, you must hold a valid licence for that vehicle and comply with all applicable road traffic law.

3. Your account

• Give accurate information when you sign up, and keep it up to date.
• Keep your password and your device secure. You are responsible for activity under your account.
• One account per person. Do not impersonate anyone else.
• Tell us promptly at support@atlasdrive.co.za if you believe your account has been compromised.

4. Safe use while driving

Atlas gives you route guidance. It does not drive for you and it cannot see the road.

• Set your destination before you move off, not while driving.
• Obey all road signs, signals, markings and speed limits, whatever Atlas says.
• A route Atlas proposes may be unsuitable, closed, illegal for your vehicle, or unsafe in the conditions. Your own observation of the road always takes priority.
• Do not follow guidance into a manoeuvre that is unsafe or unlawful.
• Handling a phone while driving is an offence in South Africa. Mount your device and use voice guidance.
• If you are leading a convoy, do not interact with the app while moving. Hand leadership to someone else or stop safely first.

5. Atlas is not an emergency service

The convoy alert feature notifies the members of your trip. It does not contact police, ambulance, fire services, a private security company, or any other responder, and there is no guarantee that any member will see it or act on it. Delivery depends on their device, their network and their notification settings.

In an emergency, call 10111 (police) or 112 (from a mobile phone). Do not rely on Atlas to summon help.

6. Accuracy of navigation and community data

Map, routing and place data comes from third parties and may be out of date, incomplete or wrong. Estimated arrival times are estimates. Landmarks referenced in guidance may have closed, moved or changed name.

Community hazard reports are submitted by other users. We do not verify them. A report may be inaccurate, stale, or mistaken, and the absence of a report does not mean the road ahead is clear. Treat all of it as information, not instruction.

7. Your content and conduct

You keep ownership of the content you create in Atlas — trip titles and descriptions, banner images, broadcast messages, aliases, profile photos, and reports. By posting it you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce and display it for the purpose of operating Atlas. This licence ends when you delete the content or your account, except for copies already distributed to other users and copies we must retain by law.

You must not use Atlas to:

• post anything unlawful, hateful, harassing, threatening, defamatory, sexually explicit, or that depicts or promotes violence;
• impersonate another person, or misrepresent your affiliation with anyone;
• share another person's private information, including their location, without their consent;
• stalk, follow, monitor or intimidate anyone;
• file deliberately false hazard reports, or report a trip or a person in bad faith;
• organise or coordinate illegal activity, including street racing or evading lawful road enforcement;
• scrape, reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code, keys or data from the app or our servers;
• circumvent rate limits, security controls, bans, or access another user's account;
• use automated means to create accounts, join trips, or file reports;
• resell, sublicense or commercially exploit Atlas without our written permission.

The Community Guidelines set out what is acceptable in trips and shared content in more detail.

8. Trips, convoys and location sharing

• Sharing your location is always your choice. Only start a share you actually want.
• Do not pressure or require another person to share their location with you.
• If you make a trip public, its title, description, type, start time and meeting point become visible to other users. Do not put private information in those fields.
• A trip admin is responsible for the trip they create, including who they admit and the content they post to it.
• Atlas does not vet the people in a public trip. Meeting strangers carries risk, and you take that risk yourself.
• Atlas is not a transport service, a carpooling service, or a party to any arrangement between users. Any agreement about lifts, costs or travel is between the users concerned.

9. Moderation and enforcement

Users can report trips and people, and block anyone. We review reports and may remove content, remove a trip from public discovery, suspend a feature, or suspend or terminate an account. Trip admins can independently remove or ban members from their own trips.

Where we can, we act proportionately and give you notice. Where content presents an immediate risk to someone's safety, we may act first and explain afterwards. If you think we got it wrong, write to support@atlasdrive.co.za.

10. Intellectual property

Atlas, the Atlas name and logo, the app, and everything in it other than user content belong to us or our licensors. We grant you a personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the app on devices you own or control, for your own non-commercial use, in accordance with these terms. No other rights are granted.

11. Third-party services

Atlas relies on third-party services including Google Maps Platform, Apple and Google sign-in and push notification services, and our hosting provider. Your use of Atlas is also subject to those providers' terms where they apply. We are not responsible for their services, and an outage or change on their side may affect Atlas.

12. Availability and changes

We aim to keep Atlas available, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. We may change, suspend or discontinue features, and we may update these terms. If a change to these terms is material, we will give reasonable notice in the app or by email. Continuing to use Atlas after a change takes effect means you accept it.

13. Termination

You may stop using Atlas and delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete Account in the app. We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these terms, if it is necessary to protect other users, or if we are required to by law.

Sections 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 16 and 17 survive termination.

14. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, and subject to section 15, Atlas is provided “as is” and “as available”. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that routes, arrival times, landmarks or community reports will be accurate, current or suitable for your journey.

15. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 68 of 2008 that cannot be waived.

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, data or goodwill, arising out of your use of Atlas. Our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with these terms is limited to [R1 000 / the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, whichever is greater].

You remain responsible for how you drive. We are not liable for a traffic contravention, collision, or loss arising from you following guidance instead of observing the road.

16. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, your content, or your unlawful use of Atlas.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa. Disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of the South African courts. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you may have the benefit of mandatory rules of your own country's law.

Before starting formal proceedings, please contact us so we can try to resolve the matter directly.

18. Contact

[Registered legal entity name]
[Registered street address], South Africa
support@atlasdrive.co.za