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This Website, as most of you know, does not report on real world developments. But we just couldn’t ignore this new feature introduced by taxi app Uber for commuters, especially since it involves a combination of tech, app & smartphones. So here goes….
…called ‘Ride Check’ it uses a commuter’s cellphone sensors to understand whether your Uber cab’s been involved in a road crash.
Posting about this in the Uber newsroom, none other than CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has explained how it will work. Since the very 1st Uber ride in 2010, GPS data has been used to put every trip on the map. That enables Uber to know where each cab is. He writes:
But we can do more: by harnessing the power of GPS and other sensors in the driver’s smartphone, our technology can detect possible crashes.
Ride Check also gives you tools to get help quickly in an accident. When a Ride Check is initiated, riders & drivers will be prompted to use the ‘Safety Toolkit’, which includes the option for 911 assistance in the US.
What’s more, this tech can also “flag trip irregularities beyond crashes that might, in some rare cases, indicate an increased safety risk.” He writes, for example, if there is a long, unexpected stop during a trip, both the rider & the driver will receive a Ride Check notification to ask if everything is OK. They can let Uber know through the app that all is well, or take other actions like using the emergency button or reporting the issue to Uber’s critical safety line. Uber will expand this technology to additional scenarios in the future.
Hands-Free Pickups
A key part of staying safe is a seamless pickup. Uber says it will soon start testing voice-activated commands. This feature offers drivers & delivery partners a hands-free way to interact with the Uber app, so they can accept trips & communicate with customers using just their voice.
Uber had the Safety Toolkit & in-app emergency button for riders, now available across the US, Canada, & India, as well as countries throughout Latin America, a few months ago. These features are now available to all drivers across the US & Canada in the new Driver app.
With this Safety Toolkit, drivers can quickly access a menu of safety features, such as Share Trip, from the home screen. They can connect directly to 911 through the app, and see their real time location — both on a map and as an address — so they can verbally share it with the 911 operator.
For more on Uber’s safety features, click here.
