Uber Plans To Start Monitoring Their Drivers' Behavior (sfgate.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Uber "has developed a new technology that it plans on using to track driver behavior, specifically if drivers are traveling too fast or braking too harshly..." according to the San Francisco Chronicle, which writes that "Information about how a driver is performing will be shared with Uber, but will also be shared with the driver, along with safety tips on how they can improve their performance." Uber will roll this out as an update to their app, using existing smartphone functionality, and "in some cities Uber will also monitor whether or not Uber drivers are picking up their phones (either to text or even just to look at maps) during a ride using the phone's gyroscope."
Ride-sharing companies seem to be growing more and more powerful. One Florida county actually received a grant to offer free Uber rides to low-income workers, and to allow the county transit authority to arrange rides for those residents without a smartphone. Uber recently even became the "official designated driving app" for Mother's Against Drunk Driving, and published a graph suggesting Uber pickups correlate to a drop in drunk-driving arrests. And in other news, Uber rides have apparently even been used by a group of human traffickers to smuggle migrants from Central America into the United States.

Comments

backseat

[markdavis]

>"specifically if drivers are traveling too fast or braking too harshly."

Here we go again. As if some desk jockey can know or predict how "good" someone is driving based on braking, acceleration, speed, or other factors WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT IS OR WAS HAPPENING WITH TRAFFIC AT THE TIME. Brake hard = avoid hitting something that wasn't your fault. Serve= avoiding collision with some idiot going into your lane while looking at their damn phone. Accelerate hard= not wasting time or trying to merge smoothly and safely. Speed = keeping up with the flow of traffic so you don't piss off everyone and become a hazard.

And yet they WON'T and CAN'T monitor if you have good following distance, if you are sharp and unaltered, if you use proper turn signals and look over your shoulders, if you have your mirrors adjusted correctly, if your car is in excellent condition (brakes, steering, suspension. tires), if you are courteous, if you are able to converse or use controls without them being a distraction, if you don't have loose items all over the place or handing from mirrors.

It is the same crap the insurance companies are trying to push with their spyware "dongles" attached to our cars. NO THANKS. Keep your blindfolded, remote, uninformed, statistics-only, past-tense, backseat driving out of my car.

Re:Ban Uber

[andymadigan]

If those medallion owners (many of whom, by the way, rented their medallions out, and thus were also rent seekers) had kept their businesses up to date then Uber wouldn't exist. They spent years fighting Uber, even trying to ban the idea of smartphone ride-hailing, rather than building their own alternative.

Don't feel bad for the taxi business, it stagnated and had to be replaced before it became a drag on society.

I don't like a lot of things about Uber. I'd really prefer that all of the vehicles and drivers be tested thoroughly for safety. Up front fares (which they seem to be implementing) would be nice too. I do like the idea of being able to report bad drivers, and pooling cars. I also like that Uber can review routes taken by drivers, it's a frequent problem in NYC that drivers intentionally take a longer route to increase their fare, or refuse to take riders to or from certain parts of the city. Don't forget that Uber was founded because the taxi cartel in San Francisco had successfully captured its regulators, keeping the number of medallions too low (restricting available service, but increasing the resale value of their medallions).

Banning Uber and forcing us all to go back to the discriminatory, fraud-ridden, unreliable taxi system is just not an option.