Taxi Law No. 580-FZ, which regulates the activities of the passenger transport market, was passed at the end of last year. It took several years to prepare. According to legislators, thanks to the innovations, order services and pickers will become accountable to passengers and travel will be safer: the risk of orders being passed on to illegal immigrants and unskilled drivers will be reduced. At the same time, drivers will observe the work and rest regime, so they will stop making transactions and the risk of accident will decrease.
for collectors
The regulations reflect the activities of organizations that find and deliver orders to carriers for the first time. Taxi aggregators appear in the legal field and receive the status of “passenger taxi ordering service”.
One of the main innovations is the creation of a federal state information system (FSIS) for passenger taxis, which will include three records. The first of these will contain information on taxi order services, the second will contain data on vehicles and their owners, and the third will contain information on companies and individuals who have obtained taxi permits.
Orders will be subject to verification of carrier, driver and vehicle on all records.
Even in the taxi cab, the entry number in the registry, driver and carrier information, the validity date and number of the transportation permit, the vehicle number and the contact phone number for complaints must be specified. Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol, regional authorities will be able to set the minimum tariff: per trip, per kilometer, per minute or combined.
for drivers
There are additional requirements for taxi drivers. No criminal record for a range of serious offenses (murder, grievous bodily harm, robbery, robbery, etc.), no medical contraindications to driving, three or more unpaid fines for traffic violations, as well as repeated deprivation of rights. Drivers will only be able to work within the region where they have a transportation permit.
Regional authorities were given the opportunity to issue mandatory certificates to taxi drivers to inform them about the region in which they will work.
Citizens will be able to become self-employed taxi drivers without creating an individual entrepreneur by making an agreement with the order service. At the same time, they will have to pass a medical and technical examination before the flight and fill out a waybill. The cost of this will be borne by individual entrepreneurs and self-employed. Drivers with IP status will be able to continue working either for themselves or for the ordering service. However, drivers will need to respect their work and rest time.
The taxi driver will now be able to work on the line for a maximum of 12 hours, and the maximum weekly working time will not exceed 40 hours.
OSAGO and “checkers”
Taxi drivers, including self-employed and self-employed, will need to have an OSAGO policy for carriers. Regional authorities will be able to set their own requirements for the appearance of a taxi: yellow body color, “checkered” and an orange lantern on the roof. Those who have obtained a transport permit before the effective date of the law will not have to change the appearance of the vehicles.
Carriers have an obligation to take responsibility for any damage to passengers.
Thanks to the innovations, for the first time, the collector assumes subsidiary liability to the carrier in case the OSAGO insurance does not cover the damage to the passenger. In case the order reaches the carrier with canceled or missing authorization, there is joint and several liability. It also puts all responsibility on the passenger for incorrect data on who will be transporting him.
Against the collectors
Technology companies that only collect information and transmit it to their counterparties reacted extremely negatively to the new law. These norms will require an increase in travel tariffs and from 1 September in regions At least 95% of current drivers will lose the ability to offer taxi servicesPavel Stennikov, the press secretary of the Maxim service, told socialbites.ca.
According to him, the law transfers the Moscow taxi model, which is subsidized in the capital, to the regions. He says the lack of similar support, low travel fees and modest financial capacity will prevent regional carriers from complying with the law.
“The law is overloaded with unnecessary, unenforceable, outdated norms that create difficulties for all parties but do not solve the real problems of the industry,” the source said.
According to a representative of Maxim, the main problems of carriers at the moment are the high cost and inaccessibility of OSAGO for taxis, the lack of infrastructure for pre-trip medical examinations and technical inspections, as well as the need to adhere to one color for all. cars in the regions. He says the law does not provide for a transitional period and does not give self-employed drivers the opportunity to obtain an operating permit in advance.
socialbites.ca, the press service of Russia’s largest aggregator Yandex.Go, reported this due to the increased requirements for taxi drivers on the eve of the new law’s entry into force.
some drivers are still in the process of acquiring the necessary documents and preparing for innovations.
Other questions from the publication regarding the operation of the new law in Yandex.Go remained unanswered.
Problems of the self-employed
Human rights defenders are generally positive about the achievements of the new law. According to Irina Zaripova, head of the Public Council for the Advancement of Taxi, the biggest problem for taxi drivers at the moment is the only requirement to undergo a pre-trip medical examination, and the unwillingness of insurance companies to sell OSAGO, or its insufficiently inflated price.
“There are difficulties in the implementation of the self-employed because there are still requirements for them under transport law rules. They must pass a daily medical examination, vehicle inspection. The most important obstacle is OSAGO’s policy towards taxis.
Its cost in the regions is 40-60 thousand rubles, in Moscow – 90-120 thousand rubles,” Zaripova told socialbites.ca.
Zaripova says that taxi drivers can undergo medical examinations remotely using special terminals, but so far such devices are not enough and in remote areas drivers do not know where to look for them. However, the market situation for manufacturers of such systems is watching and adapting after a few months – then she hopes that the norm of the medical examination law will work without errors.
“Gatherers will feel freer if the authorities shift control efforts and start building infrastructure.
The legislator has left no time for harmonization, but we are very confident in the competence of the authorities to get us through the enactment of the law smoothly,” said Zaripova.
what will be the prices
On the eve of the law’s entry into force, the Taxi Development Public Council conducted its own survey among collectors and independent market players. The research showed that travel prices will stay the same. That is, carriers do not plan to make any changes in the scale of tariffs due to innovations.
But the problem can also come from the other side – new car prices have risen due to the increased recycling fee, and the collapsing ruble has played an important role in this. Another negative factor is the sharp increase in retail fuel prices. Zaripova believes that these factors, along with the rising prices of OSAGO, could affect tariffs, but the “taxi law” has nothing to do with it.
Andrey Popkov, vice-president of the interregional public transport workers’ union “Taxi Driver”, is confused about the employment of self-employed in the current regulation of taxi activity.
He is confident that such drivers will not be able to provide the necessary level of transport security.
“This law was written under the pressure of a big collector for the benefit of the self-employed. They have no business relations, they can do whatever they want, they use it to transport immigrants. Such drivers may not comply with the work and rest regime. We tell taxi drivers that self-employment is slavery. You can be closed unilaterally and you cannot do anything about it,” said Popkov, drawing attention to the legislators’ shortcomings.
Despite a number of technical problems, the activist generally approves of the new norms, believing that the same problem in medical examinations can be solved with the development of telemedicine.
“The stricter the law, the higher the safety of passengers. All the novelties for them, as they say, are at the box office. In general, it would be good if foreigners were also prohibited from working in taxis. Popkov, of the taxi driver’s union, stated that 80% of all problems in the taxi, all crimes and accidents are caused by them.