Uber And SafetiPin Partner To Improve Safety

Safety is a top concern among many aspects of life, whether you're walking through a city or taking an Uber ride. Knowing how safe any given area is helps one plan routes, and helps regions improve areas that might be less than savory. A recent partnership between Uber and SafetiPin will help improve safety in some regions by merging the ridesharing service's drivers with SafetiPin's data collection efforts, ultimately collecting details that can be shared with city officials to improve any issues in a region.

Uber announced the partnership on Monday, saying it will be first working with SafetiPin in New Delhi, India, and later expanding that to include some other regions in Nairobi, Columbia, and more. It's not surprising to see that its collaboration starts in New Delhi in light of its recent troubles there.

SafetiPin will collect data in the form of city snapshots taken with a camera phone mounted on the exterior of a car for Uber drivers working at night. The images are taken automatically, and are used to look at nine different parameters about any given location, including things like lighting and whether there's a walking path, density, gender diversity, and more. Each image taken is given a score based on these nine parameters.

This will aid both visitors/residents and city officials. The former will be able to use the information to see which parts of a city are less safe than others, and the latter will be able to see what specific improvements need to be done (a walking path needs to be installed, more lights are needed, etc).

Users can download SafetiPin's app from their respective app stores.

SOURCE: Uber Blog