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Uber Has a Panic Button in India, but Don't Expect It to Come to the US

Uber Has a Panic Button in India, but Don't Expect It to Come to the US

By Andrea Peterson and William Wan, The Washington Post | Updated: 23 February 2016 11:32 IST

Perhaps one of the most bizarre details emerging from the investigation into a bloody shooting spree allegedly carried out by Uber driver Jason Brian Dalton in Kalamazoo, Michigan, is that he may have picked up passengers just before - and in the middle of - his deadly rampage.

A few people have told The Post as well as other media outlets that they endured frightening rides in Dalton's car Saturday, the day of the shooting. They describe him sideswiping cars and driving over medians. In fact, one man called police and reached out to Uber on Saturday after a ride around 4:30 p.m., an hour and a half before the violence began, urging them to get Dalton off the road. His fiance later expressed concerns about a lack of response from the police and Uber eventually venting frustrations on Facebook.

Yet there could be an easier way to raise the alarm when an Uber ride goes wrong. And indeed, it already exists in India a sort of panic button. But US riders shouldn't expect it anytime soon, according to the company.

The local Indian version of the app includes an emergency safety alert feature: With one click, riders have the option to connect a call to the police, send instant alerts that share information about their trip and driver to partnered local authorities, trigger the company's own incident response team, and send an automated message to pre selected emergency contacts that details the trip and allows them to monitor it by GPS in real time, according to a blog post about the system.

The feature was rolled out in India last year after sexual assault allegations against a driver, in what was described as a pilot program. Uber initially said it would bring the service to other countries and reportedly planned to deploy something similar in Chicago, according to a Chicago Sun Times story from last February, following similar allegations against an Uber driver in that city.

But it doesn't appear the panic button actually reached Chicago. And in a call about the Kalamazoo incident, Uber security chief Joe Sullivan suggested that the feature isn't on its way to US riders.

Uber developed the feature for India because the emergency response infrastructure there is not as robust as it is here, he said, and Uber might consider expanding it to other markets but probably not the US.

"In the US, 911 is the panic button," Sullivan said, arguing that it would be "a stretch" to try to do better than the formal infrastructure.

As it stands now, drivers and riders are asked to rate their experience after an Uber trip is complete and riders can leave comments describing their concerns. Buried in the apps' menu is also a "Critical Safety Response" section that urges riders to call 911 in the event of an emergency and offers an 800 number that will connect them with an Uber representative for use once they reach safety.

In Kalamazoo, however, Matt Mellen, the man who apparently took a harrowing ride in Dalton's car not long before the shooting, and his fiance said they struggled to figure out how to warn Uber about the dangerous driver. They eventually found an email address and sent a lengthy message, they said but had not yet received a response from Uber as of last night, almost a full day after reaching out.

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