Uber announced a new feature Wednesday that pairs women drivers and riders, in its latest move to address safety on the ride-hailing platform.

The new tool, which the platform will begin piloting next month in the U.S., allows women passengers to match with women drivers when booking or pre-booking rides, and create a preference in their app settings. Women drivers can also choose to drive women.

“It’s about giving women more choice, more control, and more comfort when they ride and drive,” said Camiel Irving, Uber’s vice president of U.S. and Canada operations, in a release.

The company said it isn’t guaranteed that riders will get their preference, but the feature increases the chances women will be paired in the app.

Uber will pilot the program in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. The company also said it tested the feature in countries such as France, Germany and Argentina.

This isn’t Uber’s first foray into gender preferences on its platform.

In 2019, Uber rolled out a women rider preference feature for female drivers in Saudi Arabia after women won the right to drive in 2018. That offering later expanded to about 40 countries.

Over the years, ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft have faced a myriad of safety concerns and questions over the roles these platforms have played in various sexual assault and harassment incidents.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a complaint Monday against Walmart and work-scheduling platform Branch Messenger for allegedly forcing delivery drivers to use poorly managed and costly deposit accounts in order to get paid.

“Walmart made false promises, illegally opened accounts, and took advantage of more than a million delivery drivers,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release. “Companies cannot force workers into getting paid through accounts that drain their earnings with junk fees.”

The lawsuit alleges that, since 2021, Walmart and Branch opened Branch accounts for more than one million drivers part of the Spark Driver Program, Walmart’s platform for gig economy workers to accept and schedule “last mile” deliveries, and then deposited drivers’ pay into these accounts without their consent.

The company allegedly told drivers that they would be fired if they did not want to use the Branch accounts and misled drivers about when they could access their earnings. When drivers did use the platform, they allegedly faced numerous delays or fees if they needed to transfer the money into a different account, which resulted in more than $10 million in “junk fees.”

Walmart disputed the agency’s allegations.

“The CFPB’s rushed lawsuit is riddled with factual errors and contains exaggerations and blatant misstatements of settled principles of law,” a Walmart spokesperson wrote in a statement to CNBC. “The CFPB never allowed Walmart a fair opportunity to present its case during their rushed investigation.”

The CFPB also accused Branch of failing to investigate alleged errors, failing to provide certain disclosures, failing to maintain records, failing to follow through on stop payment requests and illegally requiring consumers to waive their rights under the law.

“Branch strongly disagrees with the lawsuit filed today by the CFPB, which misstates the law and facts, and includes intentional omissions to mask the Bureau’s clear overreach,” a representative from Branch wrote in a statement to CNBC.

The lawsuit is the latest in a slew of actions the CFPB has taken against companies for mishandling consumer and worker financial accounts. The bureau previously sued Comerica Bank over allegations that it failed to administer a federal benefits program and charged illegal fees on prepaid debit cards.

Most recently, the CFPB filed a complaint against the operator of the Zelle payments network, as well as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, alleging that the firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement. The lawsuit claims customers have lost more than $870 million since the launch of Zelle in 2017.

Tesla is being sued by the family of a driver who died in a 2023 collision, claiming that the company’s “fraudulent misrepresentation” of its Autopilot technology was to blame.

The Tesla driver, Genesis Giovanni Mendoza-Martinez, died in the crash involving a Model S sedan in Walnut Creek, California. His brother, Caleb, who had been a passenger at the time, was seriously injured.

The Mendoza family sued Tesla in October in Contra Costa County, but in recent days Tesla had the case moved from state court to federal court in California’s Northern District. The Independent first reported on the venue change. Plaintiffs generally face a higher burden of proof in federal court for fraud claims.

The incident involved a 2021 Model S, which smashed into a parked fire truck while the driver was using Tesla’s Autopilot, a partially automated driving system.

Mendoza’s attorneys alleged that Tesla and Musk have exaggerated or made false claims about the Autopilot system for years in order to, “generate excitement about the company’s vehicles and thereby improve its financial condition.” They pointed to tweets, company blog posts, and remarks on earnings calls and in press interviews.

In their response, Tesla attorneys said the driver’s “own negligent acts and/or omissions” were to blame for the collision, and that “reliance on any representation made by Tesla, if any, was not a substantial factor” in causing harm to the driver or passenger. They claim Tesla’s cars and systems have a “reasonably safe design,” in compliance with state and federal laws.

Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment about the case. Brett Schreiber, an attorney representing the Mendoza family, declined to make his clients available for an interview.

There are at least 15 other active cases focused on similar claims involving Tesla incidents where Autopilot or its FSD — Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — had been in use just before a fatal or injurious crash. Three of those have been moved to federal courts. FSD is the premium version of Tesla’s partially automated driving system. While Autopilot comes as a standard option in all new Tesla vehicles, owners pay an up-front premium, or subscribe monthly to use FSD.

The crash at the center of the Mendoza-Martinez lawsuit has also been part of a broader Tesla Autopilot investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, initiated in August 2021. During the course of that investigation, Tesla made changes to its systems, including with a myriad of over-the-air software updates.

The agency has opened a second probe, which is ongoing, evaluating whether Tesla’s “recall remedy” to resolve issues with the behavior of Autopilot around stationary first responder vehicles had been effective.

NHTSA has warned Tesla that its social media posts may mislead drivers into thinking its cars are robotaxis. Additionally, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has sued Tesla, alleging its Autopilot and FSD claims amounted to false advertising.

Tesla is currently rolling out a new version of FSD to customers. Over the weekend, Musk instructed his 206.5 million-plus followers on X to “Demonstrate Tesla self-driving to a friend tomorrow,” adding that, “It feels like magic.”

Musk has been promising investors that Tesla’s cars would soon be able to drive autonomously, without a human at the wheel, since about 2014. While the company has shown off a design concept for an autonomous two-seater called the CyberCab, Tesla has yet to produce a robotaxi.

Meanwhile, competitors including WeRide and Pony.ai in China, and Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. are already operating commercial robotaxi fleets and services.

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On Tuesday, China issued 16,000 test licenses for autonomous vehicles and opened 32,000 kilometers of public test roads. In June, the government also greenlit nine domestic automakers, including BYD and Nio, to begin testing conditionally automated driving technologies on certain public roads. Elon Musk is looking to get regulatory approval for Tesla’s Full-Self Driving technology by the end of this year.

But all that action has led to many Chinese social media users saying autonomous driving is “snatching rice bowls” of drivers, or putting them out of work.

Baidu’s self-driving ride hailing platform Apollo Go has around 400 robotaxis operating in Wuhan — its largest operational region — and plans to increase that to 1,000 by the end of the year. Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, said the firm’s share of Wuhan’s ride-hailing market is only about 1%.

“Scaling will be a gradual process and it could take many years,” Li said during the firm’s quarterly earnings call on Aug. 22.

The Apollo Go service became so popular that taxi drivers petitioned Wuhan’s transport authority to limit the use of the service, according to media reports.

A check on the Apollo Go app showed a 16-minute robotaxi ride within the southern suburb of Beijing suburb would cost 10.36 yuan ($1.46), about half the 20 yuan fare listed by ride-hailing apps, which can call taxis.