For women in the United States, it will be easier to ride with a female driver on Uber.
On Wednesday, Uber announced it would launch new features that would give female riders the option to ask for female drivers and vice versa.
“All across the U.S., female riders and drivers have told us they want to pair with other women,” Uber Uber vice president Camiel Irving said in a press release. “We’ve heard them already – now we’re introducing new ways to give them more control over how they ride and drive.”
The company said the new priority will be piloted in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit in the coming weeks.
That’s how they work. When requesting a ride on demand, female users will see a new “female driver” option that matches it with female drivers. However, if waiting for the female driver is too long, they can still switch to the fastest available pickup. Riders can also keep rides with female drivers in advance for increased certainty and can even switch preferences in their app settings to increase the chances of matching female drivers, although not guaranteed.
At the same time, the driver also gained similar features. Female Uber drivers will be able to switch “female driver preferences” in their app settings, making them prioritize women’s travel requests. If you want to resume all users’ rides, they can turn off the settings at any time.
Uber introduced these features for the first time in Saudi Arabia after the country granted women legal driving rights in 2018. After an overwhelmingly positive response, these functions have expanded to 40 countries, including France, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Germany and India.
Uber says making these features reliable requires “thinking design.” Since most Uber drivers are male, the company is committed to ensuring that this feature is available in different locations around the world. These features have been tested and refined in different areas to adapt to real-world rider and driver behavior.
Uber and its rival Lyft have faced criticism and lawsuits for years because they have not done enough to resolve sexual assault on their platform. According to Uber’s own security report, the company received 2,717 reports of sexual assaults in the United States between 2021 and 2022.
Prior to the game, Lyft introduced similar features for female and non-binary riders in 2023.
