Uber has been struggling with safety from the beginning. Scams, driver and customer misbehavior, and allegations of unsafe behavior culminated this weekend in a tragic shooting in Denver. In response, Uber is finally taking some promised steps to improve safety for riders.
To start with, they’ve begun the promised ongoing background checks and added a 911 button directly from the app that was discussed back in April. If that’s not quite enough, you can add “Trusted Contacts” to your app and send those people your precise location at any time during a ride. It’s also tweaked the data you can use to identify a driver to make it easier to read and to spot the correct car, made details about Uber’s policies available with a button on the map, and is bolstering the insurance available to drivers.
This checks off quite a few concerns many have had about Uber, although questions remain about the company’s customer service and some of its more egregious abuses. The company has been on an all-out PR push to make amends for previous mistakes and to re-earn consumer confidence in the wake of a disastrous 2017 and this is certainly a part of it. Only time will tell if the company’s done enough.
(via Uber)