Uber Testing Feature That Suggests Safe, Convenient Pickup Spots When Customers Request A Ride

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While car service customers have the power to set their pickup location as precisely as they want to — either by entering a specific street address or dropping a pin on the mobile app’s map — that doesn’t mean it’s always a safe or easy place to get picked up, depending on traffic, or a place with space for a driver to wait. After some prodding, Uber will now implement a feature that recommends safe and convenient pickup spots when riders request a car.

TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote a post suggesting such a feature a few days ago, and it appears Uber was listening: The ride-hailing app is testing a “Suggested Pickup Points” that appear on a customer’s map as convenient or otherwise preferable spots for cars to arrive and wait for passengers. The hope here being that you won’t be tempted to dart across six lanes of traffic just to get to your waiting ride.

The testing so far is going on in San Francisco, with the feature explaining that passengers can “save time at these locations,” which are highlighted on the map of a customer’s location. It shows spots near the customer’s pin that would be quicker for the driver to pick them up, and allows users to then drag that pin to the suggested spot.

(via TechCrunch)

However that doesn’t take into account where your destination is — the app could ostensibly choose a spot that will require a driver to turn around or loop around the block to get going in the right direction.

Not all users are seeing the tests, which have appeared so far on iOS for uberPool, uberX, and Uber Black Car. We’ve reached out to Uber to ask for more information on the feature, and whether it’ll launch in other cities soon as well, and will update this post when we hear back.

Uber Is Now Testing “Suggested Pickup Points” [TechCrunch]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist