Uber said Wednesday plans to test a safety feature that lets passengers and drivers record their conversations and share them with the rideshare service.

A test run of the option is planned to start next month in Brazil and Mexico, with the potential to expand it beyond those countries.

"If necessary, this tool can help give us more clarity about what happened inside the vehicle on a trip," Uber global security products director Sachin Kansal said in an online post.

The move comes amid rising concerns over safety and reports of assaults and harassment in rideshare vehicles.

Recording conversations could help determine facts in a dispute, but could also raise issues around privacy.

Audio recorded using the feature in the Uber smartphone app is encrypted and left on the handset, where remains unless a rider or driver decides to share it with the California-based company, according to Sachin.

At the end of a trip, the Uber app will query whether there was a problem during the ride and a person wants to send the audio file.

The audio can't be replayed by riders or drivers, according to the company. Uber has software "keys" to unlock encrypted audio that it is given.

US probe faults Uber, human error in self-driving car crash
Washington (AFP) Nov 20, 2019 - A US investigation into the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving Uber car faulted driver inattention along with "inadequate" safety measures implemented by the company.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the "immediate cause" of the March 2018 accident was that the driver -- able to take the controls from the autonomous car at any time -- "was visually distracted throughout the trip by a personal cell phone."

The report released late Tuesday also concluded that Uber's "inadequate safety risk assessment procedures, ineffective oversight of the vehicle operators and a lack of adequate mechanisms for addressing operators' automation complacency" were additional factors.

The pedestrian killed in Tempe, Arizona was dressed in dark clothing and was pushing a bicycle that had no side reflectors when she crossed an unlighted section of roadway at night.

The report came at the conclusion of a hearing at which NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt offered harsh words for Uber's safety measures, including disabling a factory-installed collision warning system and automatic emergency braking system for the Volvo sport utility vehicle.

"The inappropriate actions of both the automated driving system, as implemented, and the vehicle's human operator, were symptoms of a deeper problem: an ineffective safety culture," Sumwalt said in his opening statement at the hearing.

The NTSB had sent a team to Tempe to investigate the fatal collision.

The Uber vehicle was part of the company's self-driving fleet of vehicles.

Uber temporarily suspended its autonomous ridesharing program, eventually putting its self-driving cars back on the road in Pittsburgh in "manual mode," with a driver at the wheel at all times.

In a statement on the NTSB report, Uber said it was committed to making safety improvements.

"We deeply regret the March 2018 crash that resulted in the loss of Elaine Herzberg's life, and we remain committed to improving the safety of our self-driving program," said Nat Beuse, who heads the division's safety efforts.

"Over the last 20 months, we have provided the NTSB with complete access to information about our technology and the developments we have made since the crash. While we are proud of our progress, we will never lose sight of what brought us here or our responsibility to continue raising the bar on safety."

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New York loses rideshare provider as Juno drops out
New York (AFP) Nov 18, 2019
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