+34London ban shows that scrutiny of passenger safety is intensifying
For Uber, the loss of its licence in London puts one of its biggest markets outside the US at risk. The regulator found unlicensed users pretending to be Uber drivers and faking their identities in at least 14,000 trips.
While Uber said it had caught the vulnerability in its system and patched it, the regulator wasn’t convinced. One of the drivers implicated had his licence suspended after he was caught peddling indecent images of children, a spokesperson for Transport for London said.Chinese giant Didi Chuxing came under scrutiny in May 2018, when state media reported a driver used his father’s account to pick up and kill a woman in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. In 2014, an Uber driver in India took a woman to an isolated area and raped her, a Delhi court found. A woman in the US said she was raped in 2018 after she got into a car with an Uber decal and was driven to a secluded location and attacked. Uber beat back her lawsuit, but the judge suggested in her ruling earlier in November that the company is opening itself to trouble if it allows its decals to remain on vehicles belonging to dangerous drivers.In October, the chair of the US House transportation and infrastructure committee called ride-hailing companies out for conducting “woefully inadequate” background checks on drivers. “Uber may need to improve background checks on drivers and even the app itself,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Aitor Ortiz, alluding to its latest problems in London. “[But] this won’t guarantee Uber a new licence, and threatens to reduce margins in a city where increasing competition from companies such as Ola, ViaVan and Bolt is adding to pressure on ride prices.” UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn made clear what such companies may have in store if his party wins the vote in December. “Uber must play by the rules,” he tweeted on Monday. “A Labour government will not tolerate companies which exploit their workers, don’t pay their fair share of taxes and disregard passengers’ safety.”
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