Uber Adds Additional Safety Features

Uber is adding additional safety features to its platform including the ability to set a group of trusted contacts that can track your rides.Read more:https://www.uber.com/newsroom/getting-serious-safety/Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontechNEW! You can add the Rich on Tech Daily Update to your Alexa Flash Briefing! Just search for the "Rich on Tech" skill in your Alexa app and add it to your briefing! You'll get a daily dose of tech news each day and a longer show on the weekends!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Uber wants to get serious about safety. I'm Rich Demiro.
This is Rich on Tech Daily. Uber just announced a
bunch of new initiatives to help make their rides safer.
Now talk about a technology that has changed our world.
I will never forget my first Uber ride. It was
March fifth, twenty twelve. Well, I didn't remember the date,
but I did remember I had my receipt in my email,

(00:25):
so I checked it out. I was headed to a
tech party in Santa Monica. I was living in West
LA and they were sending a new service to pick
me up. It was called Uber. I'd never heard of
it before, but it was a black town car that
was going to drive me to the party with kind
of like a chauffeur. Now, I'd lived in New York
City before that, so I knew what a black town
car service was like. But they were prohibitively expensive, so

(00:47):
I couldn't believe that this new service was going to
make that available to everyone. Now a lot has changed
since then. They added cheaper versions of the service like
Uber X and a bunch of others. But a fun
little fact for you. Back when Uber started, they actually
used to round down your total fare to make it
an even number like a flat ray. So my twenty
three dollars and eighty three cent fare, which was my

(01:09):
first one, became twenty three dollars flat just wanted to
reminist for a second. Now, let me tell you about
the changes coming to Uber all dealing with safety for starters.
Uber's making a lot of these safety features much easier
to find, especially during your ride, especially when you're on
that ride screen. So you can now set up to
five friends or family members as trusted contacts, and you're

(01:32):
going to be prompted to share your ride information with
them automatically at the start of every ride, so you
don't really have to think much about this now if
you don't need to do that. If you think that's
too much, There's also an option to only get the
prompt to share during nighttime rides, and of course all
the sharing is opt in. Uber's also adding some nine
to one to one functionality right into their app, so
if you need help during a ride, there will be

(01:54):
a one touch emergency button that will get you help,
that will connect you to nine one one. Uber's also
going to do a better job of showing your real
time location on a map on your screen on your phone,
so you know exactly where you are, and they're also
going to give it to you as an address, so
you can easily relay where you are to an emergency operator,
even if you're in an unfamiliar place. Drivers are going

(02:14):
to get those same features as passengers in case they
need help because it is a two way street. Uber
is also testing a feature that shares your location and
trip information automatically with nine one one operators. Now, this
is kind of tricky to do because it takes a
lot of integration with all the different systems nationwide, but
they're doing a pilot right now with this in Denver,
and the company says that up to ten thousand lives

(02:35):
could be saved each year if responders get to a
nine one one caller just one minute faster. That's pretty incredible.
Here's another big one I think a lot of Uber
passengers will appreciate when it comes to background checks on drivers.
Uber is going to now start doing a recheck of
drivers every year, both criminal and DMV rechecks of their drivers.

(02:56):
Plus they're going to use some new technology that sort
of proactively notify Uber if one of their drivers is
involved in a new offense. This will include pending duy charges.
They're going to search public records for that. And I
think this is pretty smart because there is technology out
there to kind of tell Uber about this stuff. Now
they're being much more proactive about collecting it. Uber started

(03:17):
back in two thousand and nine, and really getting around
has never been the same. It has changed so many lives,
so many workflows, and I personally have used it all
over the world. I mean, I remember using it in Japan.
Couldn't even speak to the driver, but I was able
to fire up the app, figure out where my hotel
was and get home. We used it in China. Had
a little more trouble there because I used it one

(03:38):
way and I ended up not being able to get
back in Uber because the driver tried calling me to
coordinate some details and I could not speak the language,
so that didn't work out. But I did use it
in many cities, or I have used it in many
cities across the nation. It's pretty amazing when you know
you can land in a city and get an Uber
pretty much anywhere you need to go. I've taken it

(03:58):
to work super early when my car's in the shop.
It is really unbelievable. And hopefully these safety improvements will
make the platform even more trustworthy moving forward. Thanks so
much for listening to the podcast. If you like what
I'm doing here, please rate and review it in the
iTunes store or in the Apple Podcasts app. That way
more people discover it. I'm Rich Jamai. You can always
find links to everything I mentioned here on my website.

(04:20):
Just go to richon tech dot tv. I'll talk to
you real soon.