Despite the popular perception, there are checks and balances on private cab services
A day after the Delhi police issued a notice asking Uber to formally join the investigation into an alleged rape of a young woman by a driver belonging to the popular ridesharing service, at the Uber office in Gurgaon, no one reported in to work.
A driver waiting outside the office said confidently, "We go through training and all our paper work is checked, (I)don't know how any driver could have joined without some sort of verification. Uber asks us for all our documents before the car is attached (to the service)."
What has become clear though is that there is a difference between radio taxis that need licenses from the government and services like Uber that run only through apps - a service, they say, is exempt from regulation.
Despite the popular perception, there are checks and balances on private cab services. Radio taxis need to have a 24x7 call centre as well as a GPS that can track the cabs and even alert the system in case someone tries to tamper with it or turn it off. Only those drivers who have transport badges issued by the transport department after a mandatory police verification can be hired. In addition, radio cab services own the cabs that they operate. These are pre-conditions for an operating license. But that is not the case with other services like Uber.
While Uber says it will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in the commercial transportation procedures, radio cab service operators say they had warned the government about the possible pitfalls of leaving some operators out of the ambit of law.
Kunal Lalani, chairman, Mega Cabs told NDTV, "The new lot claims they are not a service provider but just an aggregator, and hence need not be governed by rules. But that's not true. They do provide a service runs on the roads that directly impacts customers. We have written letters in the past too, to the government, pointing out that some cannot be unregulated because they say they are a tech service. There would always be pitfalls of such a system."
Only a few consumers may know the difference between what is a regulated service and an aggregator service which operates almost in the same fashion making same claims of reliability, convenience and safety, where the fine print also says, (as taken from the website of aggregator companies) they share no liability for the conduct of their drivers. So the question is then as to where such technicalities leave the commuter?