There are a lot of bad drivers on the road, and naturally, some of them are Uber drivers.

Uber now has an eye in the sky…the sky that is your Uber driver’s smartphone.

In a push for increased safe driving on its platform, Uber has rolled out a few new safety features.

Using smartphone GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope technology, Uber knows where you’re at on your trip, how smooth or rough the braking and acceleration is, and whether or not the driver is using a phone mount as a safety measure.

As a passenger you can also connect your ride with your friends or family so they know where you’re at and when you’re supposed to arrive at your destination.

As a driver, Uber will warn you:

Drivers will also receive a report after each trip, showing them how well they drove:

These are great new features, but Uber could take a big step toward safer driving by compensating drivers better across the board, instead of forcing drivers to complete a certain number of rides per week in order to receive bonuses.

I wrote more about that here, but basically instead of requiring a driver to complete 100 rides to receive a much-needed $350 bonus, they could divide that bonus by the required rides, and give full-time drivers a $3.50 bonus per ride, for example. This would reduce the number of exhausted drivers on the road at the end of the week trying to reach their bonus thresholds.

I have yet to try out the new features, but I’ll update this post with my driving stats when I do.

Here is a video Uber posted about the new features:

What has been your experience with the safety of Uber rides?