“Uber plans to record audio dur­ing rides in the Unit­ed States as part of a new secu­ri­ty fea­ture, its lat­est push to pro­tect rid­ers amid ris­ing safe­ty con­cerns,” reports Faiz Sid­diqui.

The com­pa­ny will first test the pro­gram in Latin Amer­i­ca, by allow­ing users to “acti­vate an audio record­ing on any trip or all trips,” accord­ing to Sid­diqui. “Rid­ers and dri­vers will not be able to lis­ten back.”

“In an inter­view with The Post, Sachin Kansal, Uber’s head of safe­ty prod­ucts, said the fea­ture is expect­ed to help prove the truth of what hap­pened on a ride, allow­ing the com­pa­ny to take deci­sive action,” writes Sid­diqui. Whether Uber under­takes inves­ti­ga­tions into laps­es in dri­ver con­duct in the name of safe­ty rather than to pro­tect itself from lia­bil­i­ty is a ques­tion very much raised by the arti­cle.