Uber needs to ensure passengers safety, says Yahoo chief

The grassroots US Consumer Coalition has launched a campaign to save Uber.

Uber needs to ensure safety of its passengers in the markets it operates, Yahoo chairman Maynard Webb has said in the aftermath of the California-based ride-sharing company facing backlash in India over the alleged rape of a woman by one of its drivers.

"I think they have to take a look at what are we doing to make sure that passengers are safe wherever they are," Webb said.

"You have to be in the country and you have to iterate and change and adopt, and you have to have enough of a base to understand what would be the issues.

"Frankly, as bad as that situation is, that same thing could happen with a driver in the US here," he said in an interview to Bloomberg TV on Wednesday.

"In all cases you're getting into somebody else's vehicle, and the company who provides that service needs to make sure it's safe. I think that will be something, if I were there I'd be working on in a very big way," said Webb, who was earlier chief operating officer of Ebay.

When Webb was Ebay COO, the India head of his company had to spend weeks behind the bar in India.

Somebody had put an illegal tape of two teenagers making love on the site and it was quickly taken down, but the police asked him to come down to the police station in a friendly way to give them updates on how he would deal with this in the future, and they locked him up and he stayed locked up for weeks, he said recollecting the incident.

Webb said thereafter he worked with the then Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to try to make it all work.

"We worked night and day to try to get him out, and then also try to make sure we modified all of our policies to have this not happen again," he said.

Responding to Uber facing difficulties in the Indian market after the rape of a woman, he said, problems like this are opportunities for one to make his company far better.

Meanwhile, the move of San Francisco and Los Angeles -- the two largest cities in California -- to stop Uber operations has been opposed by advocates who fear regulation could put brakes on innovation.

In a joint statement on Tuesday the district attorneys for both cities accused the ride-sharing company of ‘flagrant and unlawful business practices,’ and cited misleading statements about drivers' background checks as examples.

"Ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar have revolutionised the way we move around our cities, and consumers all over California have benefited as a result," said Robert Callahan, the Internet Association's California executive director.

"We are confident that today's developments will be resolved appropriately so that these innovative companies can continue focusing on what they do best: providing Californians with safe and efficient transportation options," Callhan said.

The grassroots US Consumer Coalition has launched a campaign to save Uber.

"Uber and other innovative transportation services are under attack. Join us to promote innovation and protect consumer choice and freedom," the coalition said.

The coalition alleged that throughout the world, entrenched interests are trying to shut down companies like Uber who offer innovative alternatives to traditional transportation services.

The California Public Utilities Commission argues that Uber is a transportation company. As a result, Uber now mandates driver background checks, insurance requirements, vehicle inspections and a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy on driver use of drugs and alcohol, among other things, it argued.

Uber is present in over 250 cities in 50 countries.

Defending Uber, its co-founder and chief executive Travis Kalanick said in a recent blog, "In 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1 million jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one.

“Parking could become less strained in our biggest cities, and city congestion may actually start to ease."

Erik Gordon, clinical assistant professor at Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan said Uber's attitude of ‘drivers are independent and we are not responsible for them’ is going to destroy its ability to attract riders and its skyrocketing value on paper.

Apoorva Jadhav post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Social Research said banning Uber is not the answer.

"It's a convenient way for the Delhi government to say, we did something and pat themselves on the back.

“It does not address vulnerability of women in public spaces," she said.