SAFETY FIRST, Uber is turning your smartphone in automatic car crash detector....

One year ago, Dara Khosrowshahi took over the reins at Uber amid a series, self-inflicted scandals, with the promise to right the ship by rescuing the ride-hail company's abysmal reputation on safety.

Well if we talk in short about this feature, you will know that if your accident is going to happen.....

So, now lets talk about this some brief because nothing is more important than Human safety...

Today, the company is celebrating Khosrowshahi's first anniversary by introducing a host of new safety improvements for both riders and drivers, including a feature called "Ride Check" that utilizes the GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, and other sensors inside a smartphone that can  detect whether their has been a vehicle crash.

"I want Uber to the safest transportation platform on the planet," Khosrowshahi said at an event in Manhattan on Wednesday.

In the event of crash, the Uber app will automatically send a notification to a rider's phone to answer a series of questions. If they verify that there has been a accident, the rider will be prompted to call 911. Uber's team of safety operators may also search out to ensure the rider is triggered.

The feature doesn't require any new permissions because it is linked to the driver's smartphone, rather than the riders. Drivers have the Uber app on more frequently than riders, who typically keep the app on in the background during trips.

"From the accelerometer, we know when certain spikes of force happen,"Sachin Kansal, Uber's director of product management, told The Verge."It takes a lot to then take that information and process it accurately to be able to determine what is actually means."

To do this, Uber's data scientists combine sensor data from the smartphone with informational gathered from hundreds of thousands of past trips to assess whether or not a crash had occurred. This requires the engineers to "remove the noise from the signal as much as possible, "Kansal said, which is why building this technology takes time."

Ride check isn't just for crashes, though. The feature is also triggered if the vehicle stops for a prolonged or unusual period of time. Riders will receive a notification asking them if everything is alright, and based on their response, the app will present a series of options, including a call to 911. Kansal said as the feature is rolled out, it hopefully will respond less and less to minor, non minor events.

The ride hail company also released a number of other features, including voice commands and an insurance hub for Uber drivers, new ways to mask addresses and phone numbers between riders and drivers, and two factor authentication to protect a rider's account from malicious hacking.


Getting into a car with a complete stranger is a concern for some people, especially with frequent reports of drivers assaulting riders, or vice versa. In order to reduce that anxiety, Uber is taking extra steps so riders and drivers can hide personal information, like home or work addresses and phone numbers, from each other.

Most recently, a pedestrian was killed after being struck by a self-driving Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. The company immediately halted its autonomous vehicle testing nationwide. Federal investigators released a preliminary report revealing the Uber vehicle's sensors spotted the predestrain but failed to apply its emergency brakes.


On the stage in Manhattan on Wednesday- Khosrowshahi said the new safety features were "just the beginning."

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