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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. Just go to richon tech dot tv. I'll talk to you real soon.