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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A University of Utah student missing for over a week was last seen meeting an unknown person at a park at 3 in the morning, authorities said Monday.

The Lyft driver who took Mackenzie Lueck from the airport and dropped her off at a park in a Salt Lake City suburb on June 17 told detectives the woman didn’t seem in any distress when she met the person, said Salt Lake City assistant police chief Tim Doubt.

The chief declined to say if she met a man or a woman and said detectives are trying to find the person. Police have searched the area around the park several times and reviewed surveillance video footage, Doubt said. It is located in North Salt Lake about 20 minutes from Lueck’s apartment.

Doubt said there is no evidence the 23-year-old woman is in danger but said they are concerned since she’s not been heard from. She has not been on social media, has missed classes, and wasn’t on a planned flight to Los Angeles on Sunday.

He acknowledged that sometimes people who are reported missing don’t want to talk to family and friends and issued a plea if that’s the case for her to reach out to police.

“We just want to make sure you are safe and we will respect your wishes,” Doubt said.

Lyft driver cleared

Rick Bowmer/AP

Lueck is a part-time student at the University of Utah in her senior year majoring in kinesiology and pre-nursing, spokesman Chris Nelson said. She has been a student there since 2014, he said.

Lueck returned early June 17 to the Salt Lake City airport after going home to California for a funeral, Doubt said. She texted her parents at about 2 a.m. that she had arrived.

Read more: A University of Utah nursing student disappeared after taking a Lyft more than a week ago

She was dropped at just about 3 a.m. at the park in North Salt Lake that sits in a popular downtown area nestled between apartment complexes and restaurants.

Police have no reason to doubt the Lyft driver’s story and have cleared him as a suspect, Doubt said. The Lyft driver, whose identity has not been revealed, gave other rides after dropping off the woman, he said.

Lyft spokeswoman Lauren Alexander said the route the driver took contained no irregularities and ended at the address requested by Lueck.

Friends and family suspicious

Rick Bowmer/AP

Ashley Fine, one of Lueck’s friends, told The Salt Lake Tribune that Lueck’s phone has been off since last Monday. She didn’t show up for her job at a Salt Lake City laboratory or her classes, she said. Fine described Lueck as a dedicated student and said missing classes was not something she did.

Lueck’s cat and car remain at her house. Her luggage hasn’t been located either, Fine said.

Lueck’s parents reported her missing Thursday. Friends spent the weekend passing out flyers and asking people to spread the word about Lueck’s disappearance.

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Uber has struggled to attain the same dominance in the tricky region of the Middle East that it’s built in places like the United States.

Those oversights — like taking two years to recognize that most consumers in the area didn’t have credit cards — helped Careem, an upstart ride-hailing company founded by former McKinsey partners, scale up with much success.

In its first seven years, Careem would rack up a market value near $2 billion as it continued to expand to 14 countries throughout the region, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and more. Those efforts were fueled in no small part by efforts to map previously undocumented cities and building out complex payments systems that can account for cash fares.

Speaking to Business Insider in February fewer than two months before Uber announced plans to acquire the company in a $3.1 billion deal, CEO Mudassir Sheikha said the region’s emerging economic status and infrastructure would make it difficult for an international giant like Uber to compete on their own without local expertise.

“For a global player to come in a start providing a service to the top 2% to 3% of the population is not difficult, they’re used to the convenience,” he said. “But as soon as you start going down the masses, you require a lot of tailoring.”

Read more: Careem’s CEO ribbed Uber for making a rookie error in the Middle East. Now Uber’s paying $3.1 billion to buy it.

But before Careem could become an Uber subsidiary, with the US-based ride-hailing giant coughing up $1.4 billion in cash and $1.7 billion in convertible notes for the company, the small team had to start somewhere.

In March 2013, the group set out to raise its first round of venture capital. Armed with these 21 slides, Sheikha and his co-founder Magnus Olsson successfully raised the company’s first $1.7 million round of venture capital (more than the $600,000 targeted in the presentation).

That same year, Careem would follow on the first raise’s success and raise another followed shortly by another $12.3 million in September from backers including STC Ventures, Iris Capital, and Oqal Angel Investment Network

Based on the company’s value in the sale to Uber, those early investors have seen roughly a 100x return on their original investment.

Here’s the pitch-deck from those first presentations that began Careem’s journey more than six years ago:

*This post has been updated to more accurately reflect the rise in value attributable Careem’s earliest investors. Shares have gained roughly 100x in value, while the company’s overall valuation has risen even more.

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Self-driving cars will significantly reduce accidents by eliminating human error, according to experts and companies developing autonomous-driving technology. But full autonomy, which would allow a car to drive anywhere without human supervision, is likely years, if not decades, away.

Despite the challenges of refining autonomous-driving systems, auto companies are already using some of the technology that will underpin them to prevent accidents today, according to a new Consumer Reports survey.

Read more: The most reliable sedans, SUVs, and pickup trucks for 2019

The survey focused on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which include features that can alert drivers to vehicles or pedestrians around them, keep vehicles from drifting out of their lane, and apply the brakes to prevent or reduce the impact of a collision. According to survey responses on around 72,000 vehicles, 57% of respondents said at least one ADAS feature had prevented a collision for their vehicle.

Respondents said blind-spot warning, which uses visual or audible signals to alert drivers about vehicles that are outside of their immediate field of vision, was the most effective ADAS feature, as 60% said it had helped prevent a crash.

Fifty-two percent of respondents said rear cross-traffic warning and rear automatic emergency braking, which alert drivers to vehicles and pedestrians behind them and apply the brakes to avoid collisions, had helped prevent a crash, and 47% said the same about forward-collision warning and front automatic emergency braking, which serve the same functions for objects and vehicles in front of a car.

The findings from the Consumer Reports survey align with a study released this month by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), which found that cars with ADAS features were around 25%-50% less likely to be involved in some kinds of accidents than those without them.

Consumer Reports highlighted Tesla and Toyota for making many ADAS features standard on their 2019 models. Twenty automakers have promised to make automatic emergency braking standard on their vehicles by 2022, though some, like General Motors and Fiat Chrysler, don’t include it as a standard feature on any of their 2019 model-year vehicles, according to Consumer Reports.

Read Consumer Reports’ full story here »

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