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Uber Says Thousands of London Drivers Threatened By English Language Test (reuters.com)
Costas Pitas, writing for Reuters: Tens of thousands of London private hire drivers could lose their licenses due to new English reading and writing requirements, taxi app Uber said on Tuesday at the start of a court battle to halt the plans. San Francisco-based Uber, which allows users to book journeys at the touch of a button on their smartphone, has grown rapidly in recent years but faced bans and protests around the world as regulators play catch-up with technology disrupting traditional operators. Uber launched legal action in August after public body Transport for London (TfL) said that drivers should have to prove their ability to communicate in English, including to a standard of reading and writing which Uber says is too high. "It produces the profoundest of human effects. At one extreme it will lead to the loss of livelihood," Uber's lawyer Thomas de la Mare told the High Court in London. There are over 110,000 private hire drivers in the British capital, according to TfL but around 33,000 would fail to pass their renewal test due to the new language hurdle, de la Mare told the court, citing a calculation of data provided by TfL.
It seems just basic common sense to require people that need to deal with the public, including in a safety context, to actually be able to converse in the national language.
......and that's Uber. They don't give a flying fuck about drivers.
. . . but as an initial point, what's wrong with requiring drivers in ENGLAND to show mastery of ENGLISH ??
But secondly, that's actually a minor hurdle, compared to the "knowledge" required to pass the legendarily hard London Cab Drive License Test.
Specifically:
To achieve the required standard to be licensed as an “All London” taxi driver you will need a thorough knowledge, primarily, of the area within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. You will need to know: all the streets; housing estates; parks and open spaces; government offices and departments; financial and commercial centres; diplomatic premises; town halls; registry offices; hospitals; places of worship; sports stadiums and leisure centres; airline offices; stations; hotels; clubs; theatres; cinemas; museums; art galleries; schools; colleges and universities; police stations and headquarters buildings; civil, criminal and coroner’s courts; prisons; and places of interest to tourists. In fact, anywhere a taxi passenger might ask to be taken.
Its a matter of public safety that I can clearly communicate with the driver. If I speak English I need to have the driver speak English, and if I am in an English speaking country I am going to statistically speak English. If the driver does not have the basic skills for the country they are working in the should be forced to get these very basic skills and if they lose the job they have for not having them then that is simply the free market at work!
I'd say there are at least some times when a certain amount of human "knowledge" beats the magic app box.
I agree that drivers who use real time traffic data are likely to do a better job, but having a basic understanding of the entire city's street layout without being beholden to a GPS device is a really valuable skill for a driver. The tech can certainly augment human knowledge by providing dynamically changing information they couldn't otherwise know, but it's an inferior substitute for a driver who instantly knows several viable routes to get where they're going.