Smartphones now used by Uber to track passengers' safety

By Colin Barry on January 26, 2016

Uber is making a smart(phone) decision to help clients

By Twitter user @Uber

An Uber passenger’s smartphone is now more helpful than before. Aside from being the main platform to pay for the service, the massively popular transportation service is now using a customer’s smartphone to measure their drivers’ safety.

For many first time, as well as long time, Uber clients, it may come as a shock that an occasional driver may be running a bit quicker than most drivers. They are similar to a taxi service seen in any major city, which are supposed to be fast. However, that does not mean that they don’t have to obey the rules of the road.

Uber lets everyone know that safety is first

In order to start informing their customers about this new tactic, Uber Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan made the announcement about the update on Tuesday. Through the company’s blog, Sullivan detailed why the company is going to start keeping track of their drivers’ habits on the road. They are basing the advancement off of several comments complaints from both riders and drivers.

“If the rating is low, we ask why,” wrote Sullivan in the blog. “It might be that a driver is unhappy about an unruly rider.  Or a rider is worried that her driver was going too fast.”

Sullivan also let readers know that the transportation company is going to be fair and balanced when trying to solve the issues with safety.

“Either way, we need to check what actually happened,” he posted in the announcement. “Mostly it’s about talking to both sides.  But increasingly technology can help get to the truth.”

How the smartphones will track the drivers

Uber ad by Flickr user Alper Çu?un

Smartphones may be fun to use, but they are also very complicated devices. With so many different internal pieces of technology, not to mention the overall complex coding and algorithms within the phone’s software, how can Uber find a way to track a car’s speed and movement?

The answer is with a new program that the company has been developing, as reported by TechCrunch. Uber is currently working out the kinks with the program as well and will be downloaded in the Uber app in the next update.

The program works with the app, as well as the smartphone’s GPS services and abilities. Using the GPS as assistance, the company can track how fast or slow a car is going on the road.

The program also uses a smartphone’s gyrometer and accelemeter to know how fast a car was going over the speed limit. The features within a smartphone can also help Uber find out if the driver has been tailgating behind other drivers.

 A city in Texas served as the experiment site; more experiments to follow

The Los Angeles Times reported that Houston has been serving as the test city for the pilot program since November of 2015.

The Guardian reports, Uber had chosen the city to be the host of the pilot program due to several drivers receiving poor reviews throughout 2015.

Uber has previously considered putting in rear facing cameras on the dashboard of each Uber driver’s car. The company has also been in talks to partner up with another San Francisco based company called Zendrive, the Guardian also reported.

What Zendrive will help out with is in the analytics department. Uber can give their results from seeing how the drivers perform with the newly updated Uber app, and Zendrive will analyze the data. Uber can then use this information to find out a driver, or a group of driver’s, statistics on the road, including speeding.

Optimistic about the future

Ad by Uber

Uber continues to climb as the one of the largest start-up companies, as well as one of the most requested transportation services in the country, reports Forbes. The company shows no signs of slowing down in regards to being a well-known and trustworthy service. The company said that it wants to make safety of both the passengers and drivers their number one priority with this new program.

“Road safety is a critically important issue,” Sullivan states at the end of the blog post. “It’s why Uber is always on the lookout for new ways, from the simple to the sophisticated, to do better.”

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