Professional drivers’ union claims Uber cannot offer safe service

GMB, the union for professional drivers, has responded to the news that a state court in Frankfurt, Germany, has issued an injunction preventing cab service Uber from offering its services without a specific permit under German transport laws. Steve Garelick, GMB branch secretary professional drivers branch, said "Up until now Uber seems to have adopted the route of forcing its way in to markets on a like it or lump it basis.”
September 3, 2014 Read time: 2 mins

GMB, the union for professional drivers, has responded to the news that a state court in Frankfurt, Germany, has issued an injunction preventing cab service Uber from offering its services without a specific permit under German transport laws.

Steve Garelick, GMB branch secretary professional drivers branch, said "Up until now Uber seems to have adopted the route of forcing its way in to markets on a like it or lump it basis.”

He says the hypothesis Uber puts forward is that the existing rates are high and that monopolies exist that somehow should be broken. He claims rates generally are dropped after a time and, as is the plan with Uber, as soon as a driverless solution is available, drivers will naturally be out of work.

He concludes: “There is a clear concern a company offering technology cannot really offer a service that offers complete safety and this is an issue."

Related Content

  • Moovit: Gut feelings no match for data
    August 7, 2019
    Cities that bring in mobility services without data might be missing out on areas where demand is highest. Ben Spencer talks to Moovit’s Alon Shantzer about how the company is helping customers to pinpoint the right locations Launching mobility services without taking into account public transportation data can lead to chaos in cities. That’s the view of Alon Shantzer, vice president international sales at Moovit, the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) provider and transit app. “The data we have can define
    Read More
  • Networked cars ‘make traffic safer and more efficient’
    June 21, 2013
    One of the largest field tests ever conducted on Car-to-X communication has shown that information exchange between vehicles and infrastructure make traffic safer and more efficient. simTD (Safe Intelligent Mobility – Test Field Germany), a joint project by leading German automotive manufacturers, component suppliers, telecommunication companies, research institutions and public authorities recently carried out tests on the simTD technology using 500 test drivers in moving traffic. Scientists at the Technis
    Read More
  • Strike action prompts commuters to try something different
    June 2, 2014
    David Crawford highlights responses to transit disruption on both sides of the Atlantic. Shortly before workers at San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) began a lengthy round of pay and conditions-related strikes in summer 2013, impacting on the daily lives of 400,000 communities, online ridesharing group Avego publicised a new web address: bartstrike.com. By the start of the following week, Avego was encouraging stranded commuters to download its smartphone app by offering them the chance in a raffle
    Read More
  • Ride-hailing and taxi drivers could face tougher criminal checks in England
    February 14, 2019
    Drivers who ply their trade on apps such as Uber could be under greater scrutiny as part of proposals being put forward by the UK government. The potential risk to passengers from the explosion of ride-hailing apps, as private-hire drivers are perceived to receive less thorough vetting – for example, to flag up past convictions – has long been argued. Incidents such as the murders of passengers by a Didi driver in China heightened such concerns - although critics point out that a US Uber driver who ad
    Read More

Highlighted Content