HYDERABAD: In an attempt to make its rides safer, Uber has integrated its emergency assistance with
Telangana Police to provide automatic location sharing details. With this new safety feature launched on Monday, riders as well as cab drivers will be able to share their live location with the police, along with their name and contact details at the swipe of a button on the Uber app.
The location will be updated every four seconds and that will help police respond swiftly in critical times to provide potentially life-saving assistance. With this new added feature, the rider or driver can access the safety toolkit by tapping the blue shield icon in the app. On reaching the ‘100’ assistance in the app, the user will be prompted to swipe 100, and the location and user contact details will be shared automatically with the police.
If the users don’t want to share their location with the police, they will have an option to turn off the share feature. In this case, the SOS signal will not be shared with the control room but the users can still reach out to 100 through their phone. Immediately, live Location - auto-updated every 4 seconds, name, contact number of the user will be shared with the police control room.
Speaking at the launch event, Telangana DGP M Mahender Reddy said: “This new integration provides us with critical details such as real-time location and user details that will help us act swiftly and save lives. We recognise and value harnessing the power of technology to improve efficiency, especially during emergencies.”
Shiva Shailendran, Director, Supply and Cities operations, India and South Asia, Uber said: “There’s nothing more critical than the safety of the people we serve and technology is at the core of our approach to safety challenges. We are continually looking at solutions to improve safety on our platform. We are proud to introduce this new tech-integration and hope to use this as a model that can be replicated in different cities.”