In response to the growing safety concerns swirling around Uber, which are now making national headlines that include the story of the woman in Boston raped by an UberX driver, smaller ride-share upstart Sidecar is now letting customers select the gender of their driver. Women who might feel unsafe getting into a car with a strange man can now instead select a female driver. As BuzzFeed reports, via a Sidecar blog post this week, Sidecar made the move after launching a version of the app that allows users to shop for rides based on ratings and names, and seeing that female passengers often chose female drivers.

Sidecar further lets users "favorite" drivers they like in order to see if they're in the area when they want them.

Sidecar has had this "marketplace" model that allows for more preferences from users since February, but the gender thing is a new addition. The model also allows users to shop based on price (Sidecar drivers can set their own fare prices), and based on a driver's ETA.

The only downside now, though, comes for female Sidecar drivers, who say they could face further harassment from male passengers who select them on purpose (and, we would guess, when drunk?). Because, yes, the gender preference is available to all users, male and female.