In a tacit acknowledgement that it’s far from doing everything possible to keep passengers and drivers as safe as possible, ride-hailing company Uber said on Tuesday that it has established an advisory board to help guide its safety procedures.
The six-person board is made up of John Barton, former deputy executive director, Texas Department of Transportation; Rob Chesnut, senior VP and general counsel at Chegg and former senior VP of trust and safety at eBay; Ed Davis, former Boston Police commissioner; Jessica Eaglin, associate professor of law at Indiana University, Maurer School of Law, and former counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice at NYU School of Law; Margaret Richardson of Counsel, Covington & Burling and former chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder; and Cindy Southworth, executive VP of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, founder of the Safety Net Technology Project, and board member of the Global Network of Women’s Shelters.
“These advisors will provide critical recommendations and counsel as we continue to develop new methods and technologies that reduce risk and increase safety for riders, drivers, and the public,” writes Uber’s first chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, in a blog post about the new board.
Uber’s move to beef up its safety approaches is no surprise. Over the years, the company has made headlines over incidents of drivers assaulting or harassing passengers, and even the other way around very recently. The taxi industry has also argued that its drivers are much safer than those of Uber in an attempt to discredit the company.