Uber, a transportation network company, headquartered in San Francisco, on Thursday, announced that it would roll out new rider community guidelines to ensure increased transparency, accountability and safety of all users.
The General Manager West Africa for Uber, Lola Kassim made this known to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
According to her, this system will ensure the adage “Treat people as you would like to be treated yourself’’ is taken seriously.
She noted that Uber had recently updated the community guidelines, which ensures safety of riders and drivers and their use of the app.
Kassim said that the community guidelines which had to do with expected behavioural standards, extend to the riders as well as driver-partners.
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According to her, we will be notifying a small number of riders that their behaviour needs to improve or their access to the app could be removed – which is already done with drivers.
“With this new policy, when Uber sees a pattern of riders getting consistent bad feedback, they will receive a warning and will be given advice on how to improve.
“If they continue to receive negative feedback from drivers after warnings, the next step would be to temporarily suspend their account for one week.
“And if there is no improvement, the rider eventually faces the possibility of full deactivation.
“Being a member of the Uber community means treating others the way they want to be treated. It’s a two-way street, riders rate drivers and drivers rate riders,” Kassim said.
She said that drivers were rated on a range of factors which included helping the rider in and out of the car, a smooth and safely-executed ride.
She noted the driver should treat the rider with respect and make the rider feel comfortable.
Kassim said that riders would be rated on if he or she did push the driver to break the speed limit because of running late and if they were rude or abusive to the driver.
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“Fostering a community of mutual respect matters to us and this change is about shared accountability on our platform and asking everyone using Uber to be respectful of one another,’’ Kassim said.
She said that was the reason the community guidelines made clear the behaviour expected from both riders and drivers using Uber.
Kassim, however, said that though majority of riders would not be affected by this update, it reminds a few of the expected behaviour while using the Uber app.
NAN reports that Uber is available in 13 cities in Sub-Saharan Africa including Abuja and Lagos.
NAN also reports that the Uber network is available in over 600 cities in about 65 countries. (NAN)