Lyft will pay various amounts in damages to the complainants, including $30,000 to J.H. It’s been ordered to modify its wheelchair policy to specify that “drivers are required to assist with the stowing of foldable or collapsible mobility devices used by individuals with disabilities, such as wheelchairs, scooters, and walkers.” The company will make a few changes to better educate drivers on the wheelchair policy, like sending quarterly reminders of the policy to drivers and creating a new educational video about the policy. For the next three years, Lyft will give the Justice Department biannual written reports on what it’s doing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Accessibility of rideshares has been an ongoing concern and the subject of many legal battles. Uber has been sued multiple times for failing to accommodate passengers with disabilities. A 2018 study conducted by the New York Lawyers for Public Interest found that 70 percent of the time, Uber and Lyft failed to provide wheelchair accessible vehicles in New York City.

“We’re going to be working with the Environmental Defense Fund, policy makers and auto makers to … make electric vehicles make sense,” Lyft President John Zimmer said in a Wednesday media briefing. “It’s all about making it work for the drivers.”

The shift to EVs in the Express Drive program, which provides rental vehicles to drivers who don’t wish to use their own cars, will take place over the next five years, Lyft said. The company has already launched EVs for Express Drive programs in Atlanta, Denver and Seattle. The goal is to only acquire EVs for the program by 2026, and for all Express Drive vehicles to be electric by 2028. 

To encourage drivers to use EVs as a personal vehicle, Lyft said it’s working with lawmakers and auto industry officials to make EVs more accessible. Lyft officials said “conversations are underway” with unspecified automakers, and that the company sees opportunities to “tweak some [EV] models to make them ideal [for rideshare].” Lyft didn’t directly answer whether, come 2030, drivers of internal combustion vehicles will be prohibited from driving for Lyft. Zimmer instead stated that Lyft will push “extremely hard” on incentives for electric vehicles.

A Union of Concerned Scientists study published earlier this year estimated that services like Uber and Lyft actually generate about 69 percent more CO2 emissions than the transportation options they displace. Lyft challenged the study, telling Engadget earlier this year that it made “misleading claims about rideshare.” However, Lyft officials now seem more ready to admit rideshare’s environmental impact — it said in a Wednesday statement that ridesharing has increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The electric vehicle switch is Lyft’s latest step toward making the business more sustainable. In 2017 Lyft hired environmentalist Paul Hawken to act as the company’s environmental advisor. In 2018, the company promised to make all rides carbon neutral by spending millions on carbon offsets.

Uber is getting some new features in California. While the favorite driver option has been live in the UK for some time, passengers in CA will, from early 2020, have the option to bookmark drivers they’d like to ride with again. Drivers will also now be given more trip information upfront — such as a passenger’s ultimate destination — allowing them to make more informed decisions about the rides they accept. Finally, drivers will be able to accept only the trips they want to take without it affecting their Uber Pro status.

According to The Washington Post, a number of Uber’s Special Investigations employees have come forward to reveal that they are forbidden from contacting the police or advising victims to pursue legal advice following an instance of assault. Meanwhile, the company has a generous three-strikes system which keeps drivers on the road long after they’ve been accused of a serious offence. One New York driver allegedly made three separate sexual advances on riders but was allowed to continue working until a fourth incident, when a rider claimed she was raped, the investigators say.

Further, in the event that a driver is blocked from the platform, Uber doesn’t share its information with police, background check firms or other rideshare companies, leaving the driver open to employment with other companies where passengers may be at risk. According to Tracey Breeden, Uber’s global heal of women’s safety, this particular policy is designed to be “survivor-centric,” allowing the complainant to “own their story” and make their own decision about contacting the police.

“At the end of the day, we’re not the judge and jury to determine whether a crime has occurred,” she continued. “We’re here to gather information, make a business decision. We’re not law enforcement.”

Uber has repeatedly tried to distance itself from the legal concerns of both its drivers and riders, asserting that as a technology platform — a middleman — it can’t be held accountable for what happens during a ride, and that as drivers are independent contractors and not employees it’s not responsible for their actions. These questionable policies are not exclusive to Uber, however. Lyft has also faced multiple lawsuits over conduct during rides, and as The Washington Post reports, interviews with Lyft employees also indicate that the company wants to limit its liability for rider and driver interactions.

Uber has implemented a number of safety measures in recent times, but if these fresh reports are true, it appears the company’s controversial approach to passenger safety is very much ingrained in its ethos, and its safety features only pay lip service to concerned customers and stakeholders. Indeed, cities around the world are revisiting their attitudes to the company in light of the many allegations it faces. In London, for example, the firm has been granted a two-month extension on its right to operate while Transport for London ultimately decides whether to grant them another five-year license, or ban them from their most important European market altogether.

Basically, Uber’s PIN feature will work as follows. Instead of being assigned a specific car, passengers will wait in line at the Uber pickup zone and share their six-digit code with the first available Uber. Uber will then ask you to verify your driver’s details before you get in the car. In theory, this eliminates the guesswork drivers must do in trying to find you amongst a crowd of other passengers.

If you’ve relied on Uber or another app-based car service for airport pickup in the past, you’ve probably had a mixed experience. Airport pickups are often a headache for passengers, drivers and airports alike, resulting in lengthy wait times, canceled rides and an increase of traffic congestion at the arrivals terminal. Some airports have even banned rideshare altogether, or designated special pickup zones.

Uber said tested its PIN feature in Bangalore, India last year, as well as at over 60 high-volume events all over the world. While Uber hopes to roll out the PIN feature at more airports, the company acknowledged that not every airport is an ideal fit. “At some locations, it’s far more efficient to retain existing pickup models due to capacity constraints and curb space availability,” wrote Uber in a blog post. As for when we’ll see it at other airports where it does make sense, Uber isn’t saying yet.