I take Uber rides at all hours of day and night, and there have been times when I’ve had second thoughts about my safety as a woman riding alone. I know I’m not the only one who’s felt that way.
Fortunately, Uber seems to be taking note of the plight of women who have places to be. Camiel Irving, Uber’s vice president of operations in the US and Canada, wrote on its website on Wednesday that the company will soon release a new safety feature that can connect female riders and drivers if they so choose.
Female riders will see an option called “Women Drivers” when they request trips on demand or book ahead. They can also set a preference to be matched with female drivers in their app settings. Female drivers — who comprised 20% of Uber drivers in 2023 — will also be able to request female passengers by toggling on the “Women Rider Preference” on their app.
Uber said that pilots will begin in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit in the next few weeks.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Irving told Bloomberg that cities with a larger number of female drivers will see the feature sooner.
The option will be offered to drivers based on the gender listed on their license, and to riders based on the name and gender specified in the app, Bloomberg reported.
In 2023, competitor Lyft launched Women+ Connect, a feature that matches women and nonbinary drivers with other women and nonbinary riders.
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Uber’s feature is designed only for those who identify as women and have identifiable female names on the Uber app, Irving told Bloomberg. Irving said the company has had “a couple of conversations” with LGBTQ+ organizations and concluded that offering the feature to the nonbinary population “is not quite the right way to serve” them right now.
Uber first introduced female rider preferences in Saudi Arabia in 2019, following the country’s decision to lift its ban on women driving. Since then, Uber said it’s expanded the safety feature to 40 countries.
Uber’s rates of sexual assault and misconduct cases have steadily dropped. The company’s latest safety report notes 2,717 reports of sexual assault and misconduct in 2021 and 2022 — about 0.0001% of total trips taken in that two-year period — down from 0.0002% in 2019 and 2020, and 0.0003% in 2017 and 2018.
But there’s a wide gray area between assault and a perfectly uneventful Uber ride. Awkward, uncomfortable, or strange experiences also occur, and the company’s latest feature could give both riders and drivers more control over these situations.
“Across the US, women riders and drivers have told us they want the option to be matched with other women on trips,” Uber said in a statement on its website. “We’ve heard them — and now we’re introducing new ways to give them even more control over how they ride and drive.”
I, for one, will try this out.
