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Uber Updates App with Crash Detection, Voice Commands and Address Anonymization

Available in over 80 countries across the globe, the Uber transportation service is completing an estimated 40 million rides per month. That’s more than a million trips a day.
Uber to update app in the coming months 1 photo
Photo: Uber
Making it all possible is the Uber app, a tool that serves both the drivers of the company and their customers. On Google Play, the app has a four-star rating from over 5 million users, while on Apple’s App store 640,000 people gave it a rating of 4.5 stars.

But that’s not enough for the company, which announced on Wednesday major additions to the app in a blog post from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

There are six major improvements to be made to the app, ranging from driver and passenger safety to account security.

The most interesting addition of them all is the Ride Check feature, meant to aid and assist Uber drivers and customers in case of a crash. Khosrowshahi says that after the feature is activated following an incident, passengers and drivers will be prompted to use Uber’s Safety Toolkit or dial 911 for assistance.

For this feature to work properly, Uber will increase the reach of its integration with the 911 services in the cities of Boston, San Diego, Washington, DC, with parts of Mexico next on the list.

In the near future, Uber also plans to begin testing voice-activated commands for the drivers, giving them the option to no longer use their hands on the app while driving.

Adding to the security level of the app, Uber will add a new anonymization feature that will hide specific pickup and drop-off addresses in the driver’s trip history. As soon as the trip ends, the driver will only see the general area where a trip started and ended, not the address.

"You can expect to see these features in your app over the coming months, and there’s more to come,” said Khosrowshahi in the blog post which you can read in full in the document attached below.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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