Taxi and hire car drivers plot fight back against uberX

Taxi and hire car drivers are increasingly looking for ways to fight back against the threat of the uberX car sharing service, fed up by police and government inaction.

Hire car owner Russell Howarth has now carried out multiple arrests of uberX drivers, and other drivers are attempting to mobilise in various ways against what they see as an existential threat to their pay and conditions.

The NSW government is unequivocal that uberX, in which drivers offer taxi-like services in their private cars, is illegal and drivers can face hefty fines.

But despite the government's intention to crack down on the service – it now says it will pursue uberX drivers through the courts with threats of $110,000 fines – the taxi and hire car industry is agitated by a lack of enforcement.

On Wednesday Fairfax Media accompanied Mr Howarth, a hire car driver and former British police officer, who has been making "citizen's arrests" of uberX drivers, for what he says was his eighth arrest.

Fighting back: Vigilante hire car owner Russell Howarth.

The incident demonstrates the volatility of situations where the incumbent industry attempts to turn the tables on its upstart competitor.

It also shows the difficulty of enforcing the law against uberX drivers – Roads and Maritime Services officers must go through the same pantomime as Mr Howarth in order to prove an uberX driver is breaking the law.

And it illustrates the flexibility of uberX, the technology company that is rapidly growing in popularity as a competitor to the private vehicle industry.

Despite finding himself in a highly stressful situation, the driver "arrested" by Mr Howarth returned to the road the next day – convinced he was not doing anything illegal by a lack of enforcement from the police and the reassurance of Uber.

Russel Howarth tries to make a citizen's arrest of an uberX driver at The Star.

Just after midday on Wednesday, Mr Howarth arranged for a friend to book him an uberX ride in central Sydney.

The driver, who Fairfax Media has chosen not to identify but who subsequently gave permission to use blurred footage of him, told Mr Howarth he did not know uberX was illegal and he would not have started in the business had he thought it was.

"If I was to do anything illegal, why would I do something for $1000 when I could do something illegal and make $100 million a week, selling drugs," he said. "I wouldn't want to do anything illegal."

The driver started with uberX four months ago when he was between jobs and said he liked the work. "I got sick and tired of going for interviews. Everybody said I'm over 50, I'm unemployable. I was just joking with my kids about that – dad's unemployable - and then I saw an ad on Facebook."

Once the driver arrived at The Star casino, however, Mr Howarth asked him to get out of the car. Mr Howarth then told him he was under arrest for offering the service, and called the police.

(Under NSW law, it is legal for a member of the public to arrest someone if they see them committing an offence.)

Within minutes, the two were surrounded by security from The Star. Also within minutes, Glenn O'Sullivan, the operations and logistics manager for Uber Sydney, arrived to offer assistance to the driver.

(Uber says it was alerted to Mr Howarth's arrest by his Twitter feed. But the company has not explained how it knew which car Mr Howarth had booked, nor how it knew he was heading to The Star.)

Mr Howarth yelled at Mr O'Sullivan not to interfere with the arrest, and it was only when six officers from Sydney Local Area Command arrived that the situation calmed.

The officers took the names of both the driver and Mr Howarth and left.

Fairfax Media has since spoken to the driver, who said that while he returned home that day stressed and agitated, he was back driving for uberX on Thursday.

He had been reassured by Uber the work was legal. Besides, if he had been breaking the law, surely the officers would have said so, he said.

"They never gave me a fine, they never gave me a warning, so obviously I wasn't doing anything wrong," the driver said, adding that the police were more interested in Mr Howarth's intimidation. "That's the way I look at it."

The government, however, says offering uberX services is illegal under the Passenger Transport Act.

"Here in NSW we have been very clear that it is illegal for drivers to participate in what we call 'ride-sharing' activities like uberX," Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian said in an emailed statement.

"Roads and Maritime Services has issued several fines of thousands of dollars for those breaking the law and RMS will also be initiating legal action before the end of the year against motorists engaged in driving for uberX."

A spokeswoman for RMS said the court could impose penalties of up to $110,000. "This is much higher than the on the spot fines currently being issued," the spokeswoman said. "The possibility of appearing before a court and being issued a much larger fine should be a deterrent for anyone considering breaking the law."

But RMS will not say how many on the spot fines it has issued so far. Part of the difficulty, it is understood, is that it must go through the same process of booking a car that Mr Howarth did. And because Uber tracks which phones are used to make bookings, even RMS officers need to continually find "fresh" phones to make bookings.

Anger within the industry is growing. On the messaging app "Telegram" a community of 170 members are discussing ways to fight back against Uber. "My suggestion is throwing eggs at all uberX," one driver said on Saturday. "If every cabbies carry two eggs on their shift and whenever we see them throw it."

Others are sharing number plates of cars offering uberX services, organising protest letters and planning boycotts at Sydney Airport.

"There's a huge amount of anger," said the president of the Australian Taxi Driver Association, Michael Jools.

"You have all these guys ready to take up arms – almost in a literal sense," Mr Jools said.

Asked why it told drivers uberX services were legal, a spokeswoman for the company said in an emailed statement: "UberX partners are providing safe, reliable transportation. The government is yet to set any standards for ride-sharing. We're calling on governments to remove this ambiguity around how people can share rides in their own personal cars."

The company says that each Uber trip is covered by its $US5 million ($5.8 million) contingency liability cover in addition to each driver's own full insurance policies, and that it added 1100 new drivers, or "partners", in the past month alone in Australia.

"We have experienced exponential growth in each of the seven Australian markets we operate in," the spokeswoman said. "This is clear evidence of huge demand for safe, reliable, affordable transport, and a dissatisfaction with the status quo."

Asked what action the police had taken after Mr Howarth has arrested drivers, and what police thought of Mr Howarth's arrests, a spokesman said: "It is subject of police investigation and it is not appropriate to comment further."