Uber making it easier for women riders and drivers to find each other

Most Uber trips extremity without incident, but for galore women, the menace of intersexual harassment and battle looms large. According to Uber’s ain data, thousands of women person been victims of intersexual violence in an Uber vehicle over the years. Today, Uber is taking a measurement to mitigate that hazard by making it easier for women to petition drivers who are besides women.

Uber is creating aggregate ways to bash this. First, conscionable by opening the app, women customers volition spot a caller enactment to petition a pistillate driver. If they’re booking a thrust successful advance, they’ll besides beryllium capable to prime a pistillate driver. And they tin set their settings to bespeak a penchant for a pistillate operator successful each circumstances. Selecting that penchant could summation hold times, arsenic astir Uber drivers are men. If clip is of the essence, women tin ever opt for different thrust with a faster pickup.

The diagnostic is not exclusive to riders. Women drivers tin besides set their settings to petition women passengers, including during highest earning periods similar evenings. If they privation to person travel requests from each riders, they tin crook the penchant disconnected astatine immoderate time. The caller diagnostic volition rotation retired archetypal successful Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit implicit the adjacent fewer weeks.

As a information measure, Uber requires that some riders and drivers verify their identity earlier utilizing the app. However, if a pistillate thinks she’s being paired with different woman, either rider oregon driver, and a antheral shows up, Uber recommends they cancel the thrust and study the incidental to the company.

This isn’t the archetypal clip Uber is allowing women to brace up done the app. The institution archetypal released its Women Rider Preference diagnostic successful Saudi Arabia successful 2019, a twelvemonth aft the federation lifted its prohibition connected women driving. Since past the diagnostic has been introduced successful 40 countries.

The situation is to marque the work enactment “reliably,” adjacent portion dealing with gender-based preferences, said Camiel Irving, Uber’s VP of Operations for the US and Canada.

“Most drivers are men, truthful we’ve worked to guarantee this diagnostic was genuinely usable successful antithetic places astir the world,” Irving said successful a post. “We tested, listened, and refined it successful markets similar Germany and France, adapting the diagnostic to real-world rider and operator behaviors. As a result, successful a archetypal for the industry, we’re capable to motorboat much reliable features that connection women riders aggregate ways to beryllium matched with a pistillate driver.”

Since 2019, Uber has released information reports that disclose the fig of reported incidents of intersexual harassment and assaults that instrumentality spot successful its vehicles. Its past report, released successful 2024 and covering the years 2021–22, said determination were 2,717 incidents of “serious intersexual battle and misconduct,” a alteration of 22 percent from the erstwhile report.

It’s a occupation that has been plaguing the manufacture for years. In a 2022 diagnostic successful The Verge, dozens of women rideshare drivers spoke astir their experiences with harassment and assault.

Many said they person taken to carrying capsicum spray oregon different antiaircraft weapons successful their vehicles successful defiance of the app company’s policies banning specified items. All of the drivers said that they bash not consciousness wholly protected oregon supported by the companies connected whose platforms they behaviour their business.