Settlement with District Attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles

Today the Superior Court of California approved the terms of a settlement between Uber and the District Attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Uber has agreed to pay $10 million as part of this settlement, as well as to address a number of advertising and airport-related issues—many of which we have already dealt with.

Safety-related advertising
Technology enables us to focus on safety before, during and after a trip in ways that were simply not possible before smartphones. However, no means of transportation can ever be 100 percent safe. Accidents and incidents do happen. That’s why we need to ensure that the language used to describe safety at Uber is clear and precise. So we’ve agreed not to use terms like “safest ride on the road” or describe our background checks as “the gold standard”. These commitments are almost identical to those we made as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement in February—and to commitments made by Lyft as part of their settlement with the district attorneys in 2014.

Operations at airports
We have agreed to allow ridesharing only at airports in California where we have explicit permission: SFO, LAX, BUR, SAN, OAK, SJC, SNA, MRY, SMF, SBA and MOD. In addition, we’ve changed the way we describe airports fees—as agreed in a class-action lawsuit last November.

California Division of Measurement Standards (DMS)
Uber will continue to work with the DMS, which last August certified our app as a reliable, accurate way to calculate fares using GPS data. The DMS also said that the app “meets or exceeds” the measurement for traditional taximeters. We are the only ridesharing app which has been approved by the DMS.

We’re glad to put this case behind us and excited to redouble our efforts serving riders and drivers across the state of California.