UBER UPDATE UK
PHONE’S SENSORS DETECT IF YOU’VE BEEN IN A CRASH
Uber is introducing a new feature that checks if you’re OK if it thinks that you may have been involved in a crash. According to Venture Beat,
the
Ride Check feature, which is expected to roll out in the coming months, uses GPS and other sensors embedded in the driver’s smartphone to detect sudden halts and guess that you may have been involved in a collision. When Ride Check is kicked into gear, both the driver and the rider will receive a pop-upmessage on their phone asking themif they’re OK - or whether they need any help. Assistance may involve linking you through to 911 or an Uber safety line, and there is an option to report a crash too. The feature won’t exclusively be used for crashes, though - if a car has stopped for an unusual amount of time while a trip is in progress, Uber may also initiate Ride Check, and other scenarios may cause Ride Check to open in the future. This isn’t the first time Uber has tapped built-in smartphone sensors to enhance its service. A couple of years back, it announced that it was to begin using gyrometer and accelerometer data from phones to verify user feedback. Uber also revealed that drivers will soon be able to go hands-free by using their voice to interact with the Uber app,meaning they can communicate with customers while on the road without having to pull over or manually interact with the app at speed. Uber has anonymised rider phone numbers for a while already, while it has also been possible to use junctions rather than home addresses to request pickups. Feeding into this, the company said that it will soon conceal pickup and dropoff addresses from drivers’ trip history records—so unless a driverwrites down the information at the time, it’s more difficult for them to track down a passenger they previously served.
Ride Check
UBER IS A ‘MAJOR SOURCE OF FRUSTRATION’ SAY LEEDS COUNCIL CHIEFS
Uber is becoming a 'major source of frustration' to the taxi trade in Leeds. That was themessage fromLeeds City Council’s taxi and pri- vate hire licensing manager Andrew White, when he spoke at a licensing meeting on Tuesday, September 4. The committee had met to discuss the proposed clean air charging zone and its possi- ble effects on the taxi trade. But the conversation soon turned to Uber and how its drivers can be registered elsewhere but still drive in Leeds. MrWhite said: “It’s amajor source of frustration for the Leeds trade. There is no doubtthat in recent case law there is a whole new ter- rain in terms of taxi and private hire. The position where you can have an Uber driver licensed in London but working in Leeds was
60
closed earlier this year. They have to be licensed in Yorkshire. For Leeds, I don’t think that arrangement goes far enough. If you have the Uber app, you should have the option to only see Leeds- licensed drivers on the app. “This is a major source of frustration for the local trade. They work to high standards and see other drivers not working to those same high standards. The market and technology is moving on all the time. We need to update our conditions to keep up with that.” Mr White told the meeting that Leeds has lobbied central government on the issue. Following the meeting, Leeds taxi representative Ghulam Nabi said Uber’s size and VAT commitments mean the industry is struggling to keep up. He told LeedsLive: “We have always had competition – we have no issues with that. But with Uber, they can afford to give cheaper ser- vices than us, which is unfair. If it was a level playing field, they would not be where they are now.” An Uber spokesperson said: “Uber abides by the same regulations as all other private hire operators and every driver who uses our app has been licensed by a local council. While private hire drivers are not restricted to only drive in the area they are licensed in, we recently made a change, in response to feedback from local coun- cils, which means that drivers can only use our app within the region they are licensed in. “Thismeans, for example, that a driver licensed by Leeds City Coun- cil can still carry out trips in Wakefield, Bradford or anywhere else in the Yorkshire region, but not outside the Yorkshire region. “Drivers who use our app provide transportation services to pas- sengers and will be registered for VAT if theymeet the threshold set by government.”
UBER DRIVERS’ MURKY PRACTICES WHICH LEAVE CUSTOMERS OUT OF POCKET
An investigation into fare boosting prac- tices by Uber drivers has been slammed by tech experts who say they are “shocked that Uber allows this to happen.” The Daily Star Sun- day
found that
drivers “rig” prices to inflate fares and pocket cancellation fees by not bothering to pick up clients - who then cancel the request. Passengers have par- ticularly noted this behaviour at airports. A Daily Star investigator recorded these delay tactics on a number of trips from Heathrow and Gatwick in London. The driver, who said he earned around £250 a night, confirmed: “There’s definitely a whole group of drivers who hang around Gatwick and Heathrow airports to get free cancellation fees, yeah.” When asked to clarify what that entailed, the source added: “So what they can do is accept the fare, then just hang around, just kind of driving around the same roundabout. “The customer cancels because they get sick of waiting and the driver gets like a fiver for nothing.” Writing on
LoyaltyLobby.com, a customer called John
The app uses geo-locating tools to find where you are and where the nearby drivers are
OCTOBER 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
