6 votes

Female Uber drivers in Saudi Arabia can now choose their passengers' gender

2 comments

  1. [2]
    dubteedub
    Link
    I think this is a really great idea. I wonder if there would be any issues in bringing this over to the US or other countries. There are more than enough drivers that I doubt it would not have any...

    I think this is a really great idea. I wonder if there would be any issues in bringing this over to the US or other countries.

    There are more than enough drivers that I doubt it would not have any noticeable impact on either passengers or drivers. It seems like a worthehile effort to me to ensure women feel safe using ride sharing apps.

    3 votes
    1. teaearlgraycold
      Link Parent
      Since almost all ride-share drivers have their phone mounted in the center of the dashboard pointed backwards, I wonder if Uber and Lyft should implement some kind of internal dash-cam using the...

      Since almost all ride-share drivers have their phone mounted in the center of the dashboard pointed backwards, I wonder if Uber and Lyft should implement some kind of internal dash-cam using the front facing camera on smartphones. You could a upload low resolution, low framerate image stream to their servers where it'll be held for a period of time. That kind of surveillance might help more in countries with women's rights than this feature could in Saudi Arabia.

      It wouldn't help too much at night (an audio stream would still be fine of course) but it seems to me like a useful safety feature. And stupid drivers who break the law while recording themselves could have the data subpoena'd for the rider's benefit.

      Of course given that this is surveillance and will eat up bandwidth it should be optional.

      3 votes