SELFIES–Means To Your Safety With UberSAFE

Global taxi service provider-UBER-has recently developed a number of initiatives for the betterment of drivers as well as riders. It is a part of the UberSAFE campaign. This strategy is supposed to create a course of action to revive Uber financially as well as culturally and encourage user safety.

WHY IS THIS CHANGE IMPORTANT?

These changes are a part of Uber’s global movement-180 days of change- following Travis kalanick’s exit which has worsened the public insight towards the company with issues related to sexual harassment, tracking user’s location after their rides by Uber app, breaking rules of Apple, the campaign of #DeleteUber, and legal proceedings with Google’s Waymo.

THE UNIQUE FEATURE–SHARE TRIP
As a part of its recent initiatives, Uber has introduced a “Share Trip” feature with which drivers can share the details of the trip, including route, with their family and friends. A similar feature is already available to riders from Uber to ensure a safe trip.
This feature, as mentioned by Uber itself, covers metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and other cities like Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Lucknow from 31 August 2017 and will cover the whole country by September end. The feature is already available in US, Mexico, Brazil as well as Cairo, Johannesburg, Singapore and many others. As far as the security of women is concerned, this feature in India is seen as an extraordinary movement to boost safety and security for women drivers.

DEDUPLICATION (DATA DUPLICATION) FEATURE

This strategy will help keep a check and de-duplicate driver partner account on its platform. It’ll remove account sharing occurrence.

As Uber said, its technology will help identify the identical accounts, which will be paused for a temporary period. It’ll ensure that only Uber verified drivers have access to the app.

In addition, verification will be conducted through face-recognition technology, where the driver takes a selfie at starting of the day which will be linked with the right driver profile for the account. Those accounts which are not verified will be deleted.

Apurva Dalal, Head of Engineering, Uber India, has recently said-“We are maximising the use of technology to bring clarity and accountability through various features like two-way feedback and ratings, GPS system and many other features, which we believe will have a favourable impact on developing trust and empathy between riders and driver partners.

IN COLLABORATION WITH “HIMMAT” APP
Uber has also associated with Delhi Police to ensure quick access to HIMMAT, an app for women safety, to increase the security of women passengers. According to Uber, this access to HIMMAT within Uber app will act as a ‘force multiplier’.
HIMMAT app was launched by Delhi Police in 2015, which has over 31,000 registered users and over 90,000 downloads.

The HIMMAT will allow passengers to send a distress call to control room of police as well as to their relatives in case of any emergency. It is said to be the first time that Delhi Police has connected with a technology company.

WOMEN SAFETY
Uber is initiating moves to improve safety measures for female passengers like the panic button. Such collaboration will make the ride easy and safe for women travelers.
These technologies led safety steps are actually crucial to overcoming the challenge of safety for women, especially in India. This strategy is particularly an essential step to repair the image of Uber as “women friendly”, over the allegations of women harassment in recent past.