The state government has turned the screws on taxi drivers who defraud passengers, starting a blacklist of badly behaving cabbies aimed at preventing them switching companies after being busted for fare-related offences.
An investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes has lifted the lid on systematic failures to stem the rorting of customers by drivers for A2B, Australia’s biggest taxi company, which owns 13cabs, Silver Service and Cabcharge.
The government has rogue taxi drivers in its sights.Credit: Wolter Peeters
In NSW, recently established laws are designed to crack down on drivers who overcharge, refuse fares and do not use the meter. Drivers can be disqualified from being behind the wheel of a taxi or ride-share vehicle if they are found guilty of offences on two separate occasions.
After a $1000 fine and infringement notice for a first offence, cabbies can be hauled before court for a second strike. A spokesperson for the industry regulator, the NSW Point to Point Transport Commissioner, said it was already considering prosecuting one driver for a second offence since December.
Amid the revelations about A2B, the Minns government has moved to further combat the cheating of passengers by making a database of drivers who had committed a fare-related offence available to all taxi and ride-share companies from Thursday.
The centralised dashboard has been improved to make it tougher for bad actors to drive for another taxi operator or for Uber as it puts their record on display.
“We know the vast majority of NSW’s 15,000 drivers are doing the right thing, but these improvements send a strong message to the minority of rogue drivers that you will be caught, fined and possibly removed from the industry altogether,” Transport Minister John Graham said.
“These upgrades to the driver vehicle dashboard support our strong stance on ‘two strikes and you’re out’ laws by making it even easier for the industry to stop the minority of drivers who are caught doing the wrong thing from working as a taxi or ride-share driver in NSW.”
New figures from the Point to Point Transport Commissioner reveal more than 1000 fines totalling $869,000 have been dished out to taxi drivers caught overcharging, not using the meter or refusing a fare since the end of 2022.
The regulator said more than 3300 passengers in NSW had received a refund after calling a taxi fare complaints hotline since it was set up three years ago.
Covert operations have also been carried out in a bid to stamp out culprits and Point to Point Transport Commissioner Anthony Wing said the transparency on drivers who had ripped off customers was a key development.
The updated driver dashboard can be seen by rider-share companies such as Uber as well as taxi businesses.Credit: Ryan Stuart
“Drivers know that my team of inspectors is frequently out conducting plainclothes operations along with highly visible compliance activities,” he said.
“If drivers are caught and fined, they now will also be visible to all operators through the driver vehicle dashboard and face being disqualified if found guilty in court on two separate occasions.”
NSW Taxi Council chief executive Nick Abrahim welcomed the enhancement, saying the relaxing of regulations in the industry since ride-share reforms had made it harder to have visibility over drivers who did the wrong thing.
He said recruiters would now be able to make better-informed decisions.
“Before a taxi company onboards a driver, it just gives that extra layer of information to help them decide whether they do or do not take them on,” he said.
Abrahim would like to see measures go further by including more powers to remove dodgy drivers from the network, not just the businesses they work for.
Among extra changes he is pushing for is a return to a centralised identification process by which driver ID cards are issued not by individual taxi companies but a single authority.
He said another step could be bringing in greater monitoring and reporting of drivers, particularly on repeat offenders, as well as the re-introduction of an industry-facing customer feedback management system that registered driver complaints.
The Taxi Council had also spoken to the regulator about tightening rules on the types of meter devices used in cabs and ramping up inspection standards that were scaled back after taxis began to face competition from Uber, Abrahim said.
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