Taxi Driver Online

As a reminder, this is part of the old map that Wolverhampton Council had that showed their designated MoT stations for the PHVs. Think I counted the thick end of 200 at one point

But now it's more like 20,000

So each MoT garage in England should get at least one Wolves-plated PHV per year

By the way, this doesn't show all the registered garages, because I think this screengrab was taken in 2021, and numbers increased subsequent to that. And it was a zoomable map, so a lot of the garages were hidden in the more densely populated areas, as should be obvious from the graphic. And this doesn't show the whole of the country - as I recall it, they had some as far north as Tyneside, and as far south as Southampton

Had a watch of that last night, and one or two jaw-dropping moments

Best bit at about 59.00 on, when he says that if there's an exclusive operator/driver relationship then there will be a contract of employment conferring worker rights etc

So basically he's saying that if it's not an Uber/Bolt scenario then it's not self-employment - shouldn't that be the other way round?

But sounds like he's maybe too busy dealing with Uber and the like, an thus he thinks exclusive driver/operator relationships are the exception rather than the norm...

Which links into the signage issue - again, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this exemption from the signage ban mean that as regards the vast majority of Wolverhampton operators they deal with, they'll still be able to display door signage?

As regards the MoT thing, I think the council is maybe misrepresenting or misconstruing the Government's best practice guidance. I think the latter is referring to MoTs generally, rather than any additional HC/PH requirements imposed by councils.

So the best practice guidance relating to MoTs isn't about specific HC/PH requirements in addition to basic MoT stuff, so not really sure where Wolves is coming from...

But does Wolves actually inspect PHVs itself in any shape or form? I think the best practice guidance assumes that councils do do that, hence the stuff about allowing the basic MoTs to be conducted anywhere

I'm certain they never see them, only the paperwork via an online portal.

At least they will now see the drivers every three years when they do their pre-licensing training courses.

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IDFIMH

Just remembered another jaw-dropper

Or maybe I'm misremembering it, but it was something about needing to get together with other local authorities so that they could decide a uniform spec for low/zero emissions vehicles.

The licensing manager said they needed to do that to stop drivers going elsewhere to get licensed

Absolutely certain they live and work in La La Land.

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IDFIMH

Came across this via TaxiPoint - an FOI request on the number of cars attached to each Wolverhampton operator

But which is interesting in that it would be instructive to know how many have their drivers under contracts of employment, as the Wolverhampton licensing manager seemed to think was the norm. Or should be the norm...

At a rough guess I'd say approximately zero

Anyway, no surprise that Uber is head and shoulders above the rest of them in terms of numbers - nearly 17,000. Bolt only 1,100 or so and Go Carz third with almost 600.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... sthrough=1

(It's not entirely clear the date to which the numbers apply, but it looks like the response was issued early in January this year. Which may explain why the numbers seem a bit out of date - didn't count them, but roughly speaking there seems to be less than 350 operators on the list, while the council's online database seems to show over 400, assuming it's up to date. Similarly, the list comprises less than 27,000 cars, while now it seems to be well over 30,000 )

The case for a national licensing regime is getting stronger

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

And I wish the likes of TaxiPoint would stop using the 'ridehail' term, giving the impression that Uber is some kind of different beast in terms of licensing etc

Which in turn maybe links to another recent TP article, namely about 'Virtual taxi ranks'. Didn't go through it in great detail, but it sounds suspiciously like, um, ride-hailing

But which could just about be worked out simply by reading the headline 'Virtual taxi ranks'

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/virtu ... xi-drivers

yep, I read it as BS

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Lost my connection again there , but the online Wolves database currently shows 47k drivers, 33k vehicles, and 444 operators

But which is interesting, because if 99% of the operators are exempt from the signage ban because they have an exclusive relationship with drivers, then clearly the ban is more than a tad irrelevant...

But the ban presumably would apply to the likes of Uber and Bolt, thus that's almost two thirds of the total in terms of cars

Uber alone comprises 63% of all Wolves-plated PHVs

The Wolverhampton plated UBERs working in our district still have ntheir UBER door signs on.

Not a UK article, but this kind of impersonation is potentially more dangerous than the door sticker thing, and nothing Wolverhampton could do about this.

Although never really heard any cases of using fake roofsigns here - usually more about people who'll get into any vehicle that will let them in, so fake rooflights etc not really necessary


Amazon rejects plea to stop selling taxi roof signs as cab scam spreads across Canada

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taxi-s ... -1.7315130

Fake drivers swap passengers' debit cards, with $1.7M in losses reported in Toronto since June 2023

Been a bit of a taxi/PH anorak for the best part of 35 years and have never read an article where an incident/attack has been aided by an unlicensed individual using a taxi roof light.

But maybe all this press will lead to someone actually doing it now.

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IDFIMH

Nothing any of us didn't know, but an interesting addition to this thread c/o PHTM.

https://content.yudu.com/web/43sy4/0A43 ... gin=reader

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IDFIMH