Skip to Content
Silicon Valley

Uber will use your smartphone’s sensors to check if your car has stopped suddenly

September 17, 2019
An Uber driver behind the windscreen of his car
An Uber driver behind the windscreen of his carAssociated Press

Uber will check in with riders and drivers if it detects unusual activity during rides in the US.

How it works: The system, called “RideCheck,” uses the GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, and other sensors on the driver’s smartphone to monitor for irregular activity, like an unexpected long stop, or a car crash. If it detects something out of the ordinary, a notification pops up on both the driver’s and rider’s app to see if everything is okay. Options range from confirming there’s no problem to calling 911 or Uber’s safety hotline.

The AI element: Uber says it uses machine learning to screen out false positives, like a lost phone, the Verge reports. Uber has been working on the system for a year and will roll it out to other countries in the following months.

The context: Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft are under pressure to improve safety amid a spate of lawsuits from women who say they have been sexually assaulted by drivers. Lyft is currently being sued by 14 women in California, with the lawsuit alleging about 100 more reports of sexual assaults by Lyft drivers between May 2015 and May 2016. It announced a similar feature to RideCheck last week. Meanwhile several states, including Massachusetts, California, and Texas, are currently investigating Uber over passenger safety.

Sign up here for our daily newsletter The Download to get your dose of the latest must-read news from the world of emerging tech.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.