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Uber has announced the rollout of Uber Teen accounts across South Africa.

This will enable youths aged 13 to 17 to hail rides, with added safety and security measures to ensure a minor is delivered without any issues. The solution is linked to parents’ and guardians’ Uber profiles so that guardians can monitor every stage of the trip, Engineering News reported.

Uber sub-Saharan Africa GM Kagiso Khaole announced this on April 11, noting how all of Uber’s safety and security solutions are employed in these accounts, including automated audio recording, trip tracking, location-based security response and artificial intelligence systems that monitor for deviations from routes and lengthy stops.

Putting your child in a stranger’s car is enough to send you down a deep and winding anxiety spiral, but now, at least, you’ll be able to have some semblance of control over what is happening in the car when they’re sent away.

The vetting system for drivers is also more extensive. Only highly rated, experienced drivers who have passed local screening and background check requirements will be able to receive trip requests from teen account holders. Guardians can also call drivers directly at any time, and Uber Teen drivers cannot change the destination of the trip.

“Uber Teen accounts are built with transparency in mind so that there are no surprises for parents, teens or drivers. Parents will receive real-time notifications and can follow along with live trip tracking every step of the way.

“We are committed to helping keep teens safe and getting families moving. Our design philosophy is to design for the most vulnerable users and thereby we enhance the safety of all users,” he told media at the company’s offices in Sandton.

Safety is embedded into the solution and all of the company’s safety features are permanently enabled on Uber Teen trips.

Further, before a teen gets in the car for a trip, they will be prompted to give their driver a unique personal identification number, or pin. This means drivers will not be able to start the trip until they enter the correct code into their application, thereby providing an extra layer of protection to ensure teens get into the right car with the right driver.

Alongside real-time trip tracking, the service incorporates RideCheck, leveraging sensors and GPS data to identify deviations from the route, sudden stops, or premature endings of rides.

If something like this happened, the Uber app would message the teen and the driver to make sure they were safe. RideCheck would be adjusted to be more sensitive during teens’ trips, Khaole said.

As for the audio recordings – they are encrypted to ensure drivers, riders, parents and Uber are unable to listen to the recordings unless an incident is reported.

The price for Uber Teens would remain the same as that for adults, but guardians are able to set up spending limits for Uber Teen accounts.

Uber has more than 250,000 users in South Africa and safety is one of the value propositions of the business, he said.

“To improve the safety of drivers, we have been piloting enhanced rider verification over the past eight months. We started with a small cohort and identified high-risk accounts that were forced to go through a verification process. We used this to stress-test the system.

“The results of the pilot are positive, and we will expand this across our operations in South Africa. In future, when setting up an account, a user will be asked to verify their identity through an identity document, passport or driver’s licence,” said Khaole.

This means that, in the event of an incident, the company is able to know that there is a real person who is identifiable behind the account, even if the person requested a ride for another person.

“We want to ensure the safety of our drivers, including our female drivers who constitute about 10% of our drivers. We are looking to increase this number, but the rider verification will improve safety for all our drivers,” he said.

Uber Teen accounts will be available in all cities and towns in South Africa that the company operates in.

[source:engineeringnews]