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Uber France Leaders Arrested For Running Illegal Taxi Company
An anonymous reader writes: Two Uber executives were arrested by French authorities for running an illegal taxi company and concealing illegal documents. This is not the first time Uber has run into trouble in France. Recently, taxi drivers started a nation-wide protest, blocking access to Roissy airport and the nation's interior minister issued a ban on UberPop. A statement from an Uber spokesperson to TechCrunch reads: "Our CEO for France and General Manager for Western Europe were invited to a police hearing this afternoon; following this interview, they were taken into custody. We are always available to answer all the questions on our service, and available to the authorities to solve any problem that could come up. Talks are in progress. In the meantime, we keep working in order to make sure that both our customers and drivers are safe following last week’s turmoils."
In Quebec, it costs upwards of 200,000$ CDN to have a taxi license.
Drivers spent their entire life's saving enough to buy their own license while they lease another one's. It's their only retirement plan: lease a license they earned to buy.
No wonder they're pissed.
they are protecting for the laws that exist that protect them, to be enforced. It's their rights. To be a taxi driver you need a pay a massive license fee, that's how it is. You can't just tell people you're a taxi driver and start making money, there's the insurances and all that, needed. Uber has NONE of it. If anything happens in a "uber taxi", you, your family and friends, essentially eat sh*t. Because not only was your using their illegal, they also don't any have sort of insurance that can protect you.
In the USA? Not quite.
Uber is not a taxi, it's a limo service. Limos are regulated in some (all?) states, but differently than taxis. You can't hail a limo on the street (or airport lane), you have to call them (phone or app) to specifically come to you. Limos don't have "medallions" and are not a limited quantity. The requirements for special driver's license, insurance, and so on, are different than taxis.
Uber provides significant insurance to it's drivers, and it's not "illegal" (at least not in the USA). And they do pay out on claims. Other tort arguments seem unlikely. HOWEVER: When you drive for Uber, your own PERSONAL insurance policy is probably void (most carriers). In fact, if you have EVER used your vehicle for Uber, your insurance is voided -- even if your claim had nothing to do with any Uber trip. If you get hit on the way to the grocery store or injure someone on your way to your day job, your nasty surprise is that you had no valid insurance at that time. Because you once on another occasion used your vehicle for a purpose that totally voids your insurance.
When you call up an insurance company these days to report an accident, the very first words out of their mouth are: "Have you ever used your vehicle for Uber, Lyft, or anything like that?" Because if they find out (and, being insurance investigators, they WILL find out) that the answer is "Yes", then they will inform you that at that time, you voided all your insurance. You Are Fucked.
Unions will be needed as long as greedy executives try to exploit labor. Any more concern trolling?
Uber left my state although it's one of the most loosely regulated because they didn't feel they should be required to have more than minimum private liability insurance as apposed to the same commercial insurance that taxis are required to have. Medallions are not required and a commercial license for a taxi driver is about $15 more than a regular driver's license every four years.
Uber operates outside the bounds of the law in France. This is well documented. There are two sets of law that they do not obey. The first is one regulating car drivers that are not taxis. It is legal in France to operate a car service to drive people from A to B but you need to abide by some restrictions. The car cannot be hailed, only booked. The driver must have some qualification, etc. Uber does not abide by these laws. The second set of law protects the consumer. In particular, data must be viewable and deletable by the consumer, and they cannot be retained indefinitely. Again Uber does not follow the law.
Recently the french equivalent to state department pointed out to Uber that they needed to change some things, so what did they do? They opened service in 5 new cities with no change. This was seen as provocation, and so obviously the top executives were brought in for questioning. The french cannot state on the one hand that something is illegal and on the other let it happen. They had to act.
Now maybe the law needs to change, this is an important debate. In the meantime in a law-based country the law needs to be upheld.
You say "let's be honest", then make up some fantasy which doesn't apply to "most countries". Maybe to yours, but not to "most countries". In Germany all the taxis I've taken have been spotless, driven by polite drivers (except one, who briefly complained about having to break a 50), are well maintained, and usually a new(-ish) Mercedes. They turn up when called, or are available to flag down on the street. Germany doesn't want Uber as the taxi service here works well.
Nope. Norway or Italy have heavily unionized workforces, whereas France has the least-unionized workforce (7.7%) in Europe save for Estonia (6.8%).
However, France has some of the richest, most politically influential unions, by a huge margin. To put it simply, unions in France are like parallel political parties, with their own occult sources of funding, high-ranking members inflitrated in every institution, and legal priviledges that protect their position.
But french taxis V.S. Uber is an entirely different, though related, issue.
To make light of the sorry state of Uber in France, you only need to know a few things:
- just a few months ago, Agnès Saal was mediatically ousted from her position as head of the INA for allegedly squandering taxpayers' money on... taxi rides (40 000 euros' worth)
- then a couple weeks ago, we learned that the amount squandered was actually an order of magnitude larger than previously stated - there was simply noway to spend that much on taxis
- also notice that Jean-Jacques Augier, the previous CEO of G7 taxis, the biggest taxi company in France, was the financing director of François Hollande's presidential campaign in 2012
- G7 taxis' current CEO is a close friend of Hollande's Parti Socialiste, and was involved in François Mitterrand's own campaigns too
The intimidation campaign that is raging on against Uber in France is simply how the politicians currently in power are defending some of their illegal sources of funding. The seemingly "out of proportion" violence of this campaign is simply a reminder that, in France, you just don't ask about political parties' or unions' money unless you're ready to die (just like Robert Boulin, Pierre Bérégovoy and judge Pierre Michel died).
Maybe we deserve this world ?