Safety measures in place to address complaints about ride-hailing: B.C.
The provincial government says it has measures in place to deal with complaints from the public over any incidents in ride-hail vehicles following a safety report released by Uber on Thursday.
That report counted almost 6,000 cases of sexual assault recorded during Uber rides over a two-year period in the United States.
“In B.C., the Passenger Transportation Branch is responsible for responding to complaints received from the public regarding taxi and ride-hail companies and drivers,” a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure said.
“We have enforcement staff within the branch to investigate complaints, and criminal code allegations are forwarded to police for follow up. We have been clear that safety is the government’s top priority when it comes to regulating passenger transportation services like ride-hailing.”
The government has carefully developed regulations and legislation in a way that protects passenger safety, by requiring ride-hail drivers to hold a Class 4 driver’s licence and undergo a vulnerable sector check, which is the most stringent type of police information check, the spokeswoman added.
Drivers with red flags on their police information check are ineligible to drive ride-hail vehicles under the provincial regulations. In addition, drivers must not have any motor vehicle driving prohibitions within the past three years.
In B.C., ride-hail companies must issue record check certificates to their drivers.
Some examples of what must be included are the driver’s full legal name and photo, a statement confirming the driver has undergone a police and driving-record check, and the make, model, year of manufacture and licence plate information for the vehicle.
The province began accepting applications from ride-hail companies on Sept. 3, and Uber has said it hopes to be operating in Vancouver by Christmas.
The company took 21 months to collect the sexual-assault data, according to Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer. Of the 5,981 sexual assaults recorded, 464 were cases of rape, and 92 per cent of the rape victims were riders, almost all of them female.