It seems that the bitter global dispute between taxi drivers and the new breed of Uber ‘drivers for hire’ is rarely out of the news at the moment. In a new twist, it seems that London taxi drivers have actually gone as far as spying on their smartphone app- toting counterparts in a bid to discover just what they’re up to.
International Business Times reported recently that some of London’s cab drivers have hired private detectives in order to gather intelligence on Uber drivers. The private detectives posed as passengers using the Uber app in order to find out information about their practices.
The action was initiated by members of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, who are angry not only at substantial undercutting of their own fares, but also because they claim that the Uber app’s fare calculations effectively act as a taxi meter. In the UK of course, only Hackney or Black cabs are legally allowed to carry taxi meters. The matter is currently expected to go before the High Court, which will rule on the legality of the app.
Investigating Uber
It is understood that the private detectives were hired to find out specific information on how Uber drivers go about picking up their customers and how fares are calculated. It could be speculated that they may also have looked into matters such as whether the drivers held full taxi insurance suitable for a private hire vehicle (a vehicle that is pre-booked, not hailed from the side of the road), or whether they had only standard car insurance.
Uber drivers are not currently required to have a taxi licence in the UK, but Uber says that its UK drivers are all insured as private hire drivers. Many Hackney carriage drivers however argue that the Uber app acts as a taxi meter, and that they are therefore operating as unlicensed cabs without the correct taxi insurance.
In Germany, Uber has been banned in a number of cities, including Berlin. The city’s State Department of Civil and Regulatory Affairs said earlier this year that it cannot allow a form of transport that uses ‘non-approved drivers in unlicensed vehicles’. They expressed particular concern that passengers were not insured in case of injury.