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- All writing eye: taxi drivers will be required to undergo a medical examination on camera
All writing eye: taxi drivers will be required to undergo a medical examination on camera
Drivers of passenger taxis may be required to undergo mandatory medical and technical examinations on camera. The deputies plan to introduce such amendments to the law on technical inspection and road safety. Now many drivers ignore this requirement, which affects the safety of passengers. The initiative was negatively received in the professional community, pointing out the lack of necessary infrastructure for the huge number of drivers today. Taxi prices may also rise against the background of the changes, market participants say. About how the system will work and what risks it carries for the industry, see the Izvestia article.
How they want to restrict taxi drivers
Taxi drivers of passenger cars may be required to videotape their medical check-up before setting off on a route. Such amendments to the law have been prepared by a number of deputies, including Dmitry Gusev, first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Control, and will be submitted to the State Duma in the coming days (Izvestia has the document).
The changes are aimed at tightening the requirements for drivers of passenger taxis. In particular, it is proposed to fix the mandatory video recording of the medical examination procedure. After that, the records will be sent to the traffic police.
"The draft law proposes to fix the obligation of a person conducting a medical examination of a passenger taxi driver to send video materials confirming the fact of passing a medical examination to the federal executive authority in the field of road safety," the explanatory note says. - And also to consolidate the duty of the operator of the technical inspection to send video materials confirming the fact of passing the technical inspection."
However, the obligation of video recording is planned to be extended only to passenger taxis. Another bill to be introduced will fix the duty of aggregators to ensure that drivers can undergo various types of inspections. This, according to the authors, will make mandatory procedures more accessible to taxi drivers and ease the bureaucratic burden on drivers.
The relevance of the adjustments is due to the critical situation in the passenger transportation industry, Dmitry Gusev told Izvestia. The vast majority of taxi drivers do not undergo inspections, going on flights with fake certificates that are purchased for money.
— The requirements of the taxi law are not respected by carriers today, almost no one really passes a technical and medical examination, — the deputy emphasized. — But there is a law, so it must either be followed, or the requirements must be changed so that they become feasible for people. Therefore, in the first case, we tighten the rules for passing technical and medical examinations and require photo and video recording every day. And everyone understands that you really passed it, you were in the hospital, you were at the service station.
Valery Korneev, Chairman of ANO Digital World, agreed that it is high time to change the methods of monitoring the technical condition of the car and the physical driver.
"This is not the middle of the 20th century, cars are completely different, and carriers, that is, drivers and taxi companies themselves, have long been legally responsible for what is happening on the road and for their physical condition," he pointed out. — And the law enshrines archaic requirements typical of the state-directed economy and the technical realities of the last century. Nowhere in the world are there such conditions for access to the steering wheel in a taxi, except in our country and some countries of the post-Soviet space, and nowhere among them does no one really comply with these rules. And without negative consequences for traffic safety.
According to him, the current rules are redundant and work only in favor of those who sell drivers "bundles of travel documents with notes on passing a technical and medical examination."
Why is the industry against it
— First of all, a certain special accident rate of trips is a myth, — said the press service of the Maxim taxi aggregator. — The service is safe. So, in 2024, the share of accidents involving victims in hundreds of millions of trips through our service was only 0.00008%. This is below the level of statistical error. Of these, there are no cases due to driver intoxication or car malfunction.
Half of the accidents were caused by other road users and the condition of the roads, they stressed. Back in September 2023, Federal Law 580-FZ "On Taxis" came into force, and in practice many of its requirements are unnecessary, added Daniel Kurashev, Citymobil's chief Operating Officer.
"Self—employed drivers and individual entrepreneurs without hired employees have received the right to legally work in a taxi as a carrier," he recalled. — At the same time, there is a requirement for such drivers to undergo pre-trip and post-trip medical and technical examinations with a waybill. Moreover, a driver who works in his car does not even have the right to go to the store for bread without a travel permit.
However, the required number of specialists, such as doctors, mechanics, as well as points where pre-flight inspections can be carried out and appropriate documents obtained, do not exist on the market, Daniil Kurashev added.
"The FGIS Taxi contains records of more than a million cars," the aggregator's press service added. — Registries do not collect data on drivers, but from one and a half to two million drivers should work on such a number of vehicles. They are not listed in the registers of carriers. More than 5 million private drivers work on private cars.
For example, in Ufa, Tula, Irkutsk, Lipetsk and other regional centers, only five to nine medical institutions can provide pre–trip medical examination services to individuals, and about 30 in Yekaterinburg.
"At the same time, everyone can carry out no more than 50 inspections per day, whereas even in small towns, from 3 to 5 thousand drivers are replaced daily," they added. — The medical check-up queue will take weeks, during which the driver will not be able to earn anything.
The obligation to additionally undergo a medical check-up under camera will create a collapse in the field of legal taxis and encourage drivers to work the old-fashioned way "from the side", rather than through aggregators. This will significantly reduce control over the industry and increase transportation safety risks, Daniil Kurashev noted.
"There are technological solutions that make it possible to replace archaism in the form of a waybill with integrated technological intelligent solutions for monitoring the driver's condition installed in the taxi car," he noted. — Naturally, they are not the cheapest, and such expenses will become clearly unaffordable for private drivers and for most taxi companies, therefore, a special state support program is needed for their implementation.
Will taxi prices rise
In 2024, amendments to the legislation have already required taxi drivers to undergo a medical examination and technical inspection of the vehicle before leaving the line, Denis Khuziakhmetov, head of the Belaya Sova Law College, recalled.
"But taxi companies often go to great lengths to fulfill this requirement," he stressed. — For example, by affixing a certificate of inspection without actually passing it. Such behavior could not remain unchecked, and therefore new amendments to the aforementioned laws were proposed. Will these changes stop the abuse? I think not until significant administrative liability is established for violating the inspection procedure, established based on the video footage.
Timofey Bashlykov, associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, added that regular medical and technical examinations for taxi drivers are a measure aimed at reducing the level of accidents on the roads.
— This will entail a certain economic effect, as it is assumed that the damage from road accidents and the elimination of their consequences will be reduced, — the expert explained. — On the other hand, the costs of conducting such inspections will naturally be included in the prices for taxi services, which is likely to lead to their growth.
It cannot be ruled out that due to the adoption of the amendments, the number of corruption crimes in the field of passenger transportation will increase and the amount of funds in the "shadow" sector of the economy will increase, Timofey Bashlykov noted.
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