Uber’s ‘Report My Trip’ Characteristic Is Increasing to Extra Cities

Uber’s Report My Trip function is increasing to much more cities throughout america. The function offers each passengers and drivers the power to simply document audio throughout a visit in an effort to spice up security for each events concerned.

What’s Report My Trip?

Report My Trip is a security function from Uber that helps drivers and passengers doc what’s occurring throughout a visit if both celebration turns into uneasy or feels threatened. Utilizing the Uber app, drivers and passengers can document audio to undergo the corporate in a security report.

The function was first piloted in 2019 in numerous international locations in Latin America, earlier than it was introduced to pick cities within the U.S. on the tail finish of 2021. Uber claims that 70% of riders and drivers in Brazil’s Rio De Janeiro reported feeling safer whereas utilizing the function. Whereas Uber can’t carry Report My Trip to the whole thing of the U.S. since recording laws vary from state to state, the corporate expanded the function to Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake Metropolis, San Antonio and Tucson in November 2022.

On the similar time, Uber revealed it was engaged on a dashcam-like video recording function as a part of a pilot program that included drivers in Cincinnati, Louisville, New York Metropolis, and Santos and João Pessoa in Brazil.

How do I entry Report My Trip?

Report my Trip will solely seem when you find yourself a passenger or driver in an energetic experience. For passengers, faucet the blue protect button within the backside proper nook of the map view throughout your experience to open the Safety Toolkit, and choose Report Audio from the menu. Uber will instantly start recording audio of your journey together with your cellphone. For drivers, the blue protect icon is positioned within the backside left of the map view.

Are there safety concerns with Record My Ride?

Uber says that the audio you record will remain on your phone and will stay encrypted until you file a report to Uber’s Safety Team, and add the audio as an attachment. Likewise, the company says that the passenger will get a notification when their driver begins recording audio, and vice versa, but the dashcam feature apparently sends no such notification. There is also the ongoing concern of a tech company collecting more data from its users to use in some way later on.

“Uber already has this treasure trove of highly personal data about people,” said Camille Fischer, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in The New York Occasions. “If you pair surveillance throughout these journeys, whether or not it’s over the motive force or over the passenger, you’re getting a extra fine-tuned snapshot of individuals’s day by day lives.”

Uber didn’t instantly return Gizmodo’s request for remark.

Regardless, Uber’s voyage into video and audio recording are born from stories of violence occurring in rides, during which drivers and passengers are sometimes remoted from exterior assist. A driver in East Bay, California was brutally attacked by a passenger in early 2023, leading to a $20,000 hospital invoice. Uber can be the main focus of a lawsuit waged towards the corporate over stories of girls being sexually assaulted by drivers as early as 2014.