RideCheck: Connecting you with help when you need it | Hacker News Reader

RideCheck: Connecting you with help when you need it

uber.com

25 pointsjbredeche16 comments

I wonder about the implications of notifying both rider and driver that Uber's internal checks have indicated that something might be wrong.

I can think of a few situations where the driver is doing something that violates Uber's policies, and the rider may want to notify Uber discretely, without the driver being aware that the rider knows there's a problem -- because if the driver knows, that may leads to a worse outcome.

Similar to when a bank robbery is taking place and the teller surreptitiously presses a silent alarm button. There's a reason why that button is silent.

I think you are misunderstanding this feature. It's more like a "targeted ad" where the "target audience" is people who were in accidents and the "product" is free/easy acess to things like 911, help w/ insurance etc. I imagine there's going to some false positives (e.g. maybe the algorithm can't discern between an accident and being stuck in traffic), but the "have you been in an accident? yes/no" prompt is unobtrusive enough, all things considered.

The silent button thing you're thinking of actually sort of exists too, but it's somewhere else (in the Safety Center section of app): if the police dept of your city supports it, activating the 911 feature through the app sends your ride information to the police.

You can also use the "share my trip" feature and texting to get a family member or friend to call police for you

"Sorry to hear that" seems like an odd response after you indicate you've been in a crash of unknown severity.

Manager: "We're still working on the copy for the confirmation text"

Developer: "Ok, I'll just put this as a placeholder for now"

[3 weeks later]

Developer: I left a note in the code that this was only placeholder text. Do you have the final copy?

Manager: Let's leave it for now. I still need to confirm with Bob and Alice.

Developer: [Shrugs and goes home for the day]

Should have just gone all-in with “Major bumskies bro”

Seems a little embarrassing it took them so long to send a notification to our app that we were sitting in one spot longer than the traffic data suggests is appropriate. I bet they spent millions on this.

Doing this without having too many false positives is the hard part.

What if the offending Uber driver subdues the passenger and grabs the passenger’s phone and claims everything is okay ? Brainiacs

This thing is for car accidents.

In my mind, the only thing a company could do to try to prevent the scenario you're describing is doing background checks, but that assumes a correlation between a background check and a propensity for violence can be established, which may or may not be the case.

By the time an actual physical attack is happening, I don't think there's much anyone could do, brainiac or not.

You say it's for car accidents, but the GIFs embedded in the post, as well as the post itself, imply that it's broader than that and reference the Uber Safety Line.

> imply that it's broader than that

Are you sure you're not just projecting your own impressions onto the article? Where do you see that being implied? The GIF literally asks if you were in a car crash. I'm curious where you and the GP get the impression this feature extends to physical assaults.

> our technology can detect possible crashes or if a trip goes unusually off course.

> When a RideCheck is initiated, both a rider and driver will receive a notification asking if everything is OK. They can let us know through the app that all is well, or take other actions like using the emergency button or reporting the issue to Uber’s Safety Line. Our safety team may also follow up by phone to inquire about the RideCheck. In the event of a crash, we can also help expedite the insurance claims process.

To me this reads like a feature to deal with scenarios involving injury due to car accidents. The only thing that remotely sounds related to assaults is the presence of a 911 link, but that's something you also want to have in case of a medical emergency; it's not exclusive to only scenarios when you're explicitly being attacked by someone.

What if the driver did that without this feature in place?

Not an academic question.

Ignore the titlegore.

https://www.delcotimes.com/news/uber-driver-from-upper-darby...

How does that feature help in anything?

>In the event of a crash, we can also help expedite the insurance claims process.

While true, I assume this has little to do with the in-app feature. That is, I doubt "detecting" the crash has much of a connection with the claims process other than making the button more visible. I don't drive for Uber, but I assume any claims assistance they provide existed before this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com