A large part of the appeal of Uber is that riders and drivers alike can rate the treatment and behaviour of each other. More often than not Uber is quick to respond to reviews, quickly refunding trips and dealing with drivers. Ill-disciplined riders have been dealt with as well. This process has always had its flaws and Uber wants to solve this. The company wants to make the rating system far more conclusive by using smartphone technology to gather data on rides.
Uber announced today that it has been running a pilot project that uses smartphone technology to gather data on rides. The driver’s smartphone gyrometer and accelerometers helps Uber gather data about rides, instead of taking the rider or driver’s words. Gyrometer, according to the company, can measure small movement whilst GPS and accelerometers collects data about how often a rider starts and stops, as well as overall speed.
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The data includes information about whether the driver was checking their phone. The company says that this is far more accurate than its current means of rating.
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In a blog post, Uber wrote “If the rating is low, we ask why. It might be that a driver is unhappy about an unruly rider. Or a rider is worried that her driver was going too fast. Either way, we need to check what actually happened. Mostly it’s about talking to both sides. But increasingly technology can help get to the truth”
The company will not be using this data exclusively for verifying ratings but to curate a better experience and service, from small adjustment like giving its drivers smartphone mounts if the data shows that they keep moving their phone around, to the important adjustment of measuring the driver’s speed in certain routes to find the perfect average speed on that route so that when a driver is speeding, the company will know right away.
