Why a tragedy with a taxi hitting 11 people became possible in Kazan
Aggregators punish taxi drivers with rubles for bad customer reviews but do not check for alcohol or criminal records
The details of the “career” of taxi driver Yevgeny Krusev who hit 11 people at a bus stop on Vishnevsky Street in Kazan on 10 March made public by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan indicate that the measures taken to ensure the safety of passenger transportation are clearly insufficient. Read more about laws that do not work, problems that are not solved and figures characterizing the level of safety in taxi transportation in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
“Nobody has ever checked me for sobriety”
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tatarstan reported that during the investigation of the accident on Vishnevsky Street, it was established that the suspected taxi driver who hit 11 people at Kalinina bus stop used a fake medical certificate from a psychiatrist. This became not only an additional touch to the “portrait” of Yevgeny Krusev, but, in fact, also a weighty characterization of the attitude of the taxi aggregator, which connected such a driver to the service, to issues of passenger safety.
Today, an aggregator can send a client a car driven by a person under the influence of alcohol or drugs or a sober but sleepy driver who has been driving for 12-14 hours straight. After all, a driver who is trusted with the lives and health of taxi passengers does not undergo a pre-trip medical examination, is not checked. Or a migrant who is banned from driving a taxi in the republic can arrive — the aggregator may list him as “Oleg,” and ask the client to transfer money to “Ravshan’s” card, which is what this resident of the post-Soviet space actually is.
“I have been working with the Yandex.Taxi aggregator for several years,” says car owner Viktor Alexandrov. “The aggregator punishes drivers for literally everything! For example, it is enough to get five negative reviews out of 150 for passengers to lower their rating and deprive them of the opportunity to work in the Comfort Plus or Business tariff. And a person loses money, even if they were given a bad rating for requiring them to fasten their seat belt. The driver is not asked about the reasons for the bad review, and the passenger, even if he got drunk, stained the car with waste and did not pay, is always right. At the same time, the driver is not asked for a certificate of no criminal record, they are not interested in when and why he was deprived of his license, and they turn a blind eye to the substitution of the driver. We have a lot of migrants working under the guise of locals, and no ban is scary for them.”
Alexandrov said that no one had ever checked him for sobriety, demanded that he undergo a pre-trip medical examination, inquired about how much time he spent behind the wheel, or asked for a certificate of criminal record or the number and causes of accidents he had committed. And also that the aggregator takes such a percentage for its services that often, especially with a rental car, in order to “recoup” the rent, gasoline, and the aggregator's services, and also earn a living, the driver has to stay on the line for 12-14 hours. There is no point in expecting safe driving in such conditions, the taxi driver himself admits.
“Harvest” of one raid
After the tragedy on Vishnevsky Street, the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Kazan urgently conducted a raid to identify taxi drivers violating the ban on migrants working in this sector. As Realnoe Vremya was told there, 12 violators were identified in one day:
“The State Traffic Safety Inspectorate officers drew up nine administrative cases under Part 1 of Article 12.5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (for driving a vehicle in the presence of malfunctions or conditions under which, in accordance with the Basic Provisions for Admitting a Vehicle to Operation and the Duties of Officials to Ensure Road Safety, the operation of a vehicle is prohibited), Part 1.1 of Article 12.5 (for driving a vehicle for which a diagnostic card confirming the admission of the vehicle to participation in road traffic has not been issued in the established manner), Part 2 of Article 12.5 (for driving a vehicle with a knowingly faulty braking system, steering), Part 1 of Article 12.7 (for driving a vehicle by a driver who does not have the right to drive a vehicle).”
Another 12 administrative cases were filed against the same drivers under Articles 18.8 (for violation by a foreign citizen or stateless person of the rules for entry into the Russian Federation or the regime of stay (residence) in the Russian Federation), 18.10 (illegal performance by a foreign citizen or stateless person of labour activity in the Russian Federation) and 18.17 (failure by a foreign citizen or stateless person to comply with restrictions on the performance of certain types of activity established in accordance with federal law with respect to foreign citizens and stateless persons).
All of these articles provide for liability in the form of a fine — from 500 rubles to 15,000, with the exception of the “migrant” articles, which also provide for the possibility of deporting violators from Russia (but deportation is not mandatory).
“These are competitors of law-abiding taxi drivers with a normal accident history”
Realnoe Vremya contacted the press service of Yandex.Go with a request about how the aggregator checks drivers before concluding a contract with them — what information it requests, whether it checks for a criminal record, in particular for criminal cases related to traffic violations and drugs. Does it check the driver's history, in particular, whether he was deprived of the right to drive a car in the past, and if so, for what, do they take into account facts of deprivation of rights for drunk driving or after using drugs in the past when hiring. The publication also asked to report what certificates and documents the driver must present to the aggregator in order to receive orders, and how the aggregator ensures that the driver passes the pre-trip medical examination. The aggregator's responses will be published upon receipt.
“A lot of information about drivers is publicly available, and we check it,” Director of Black Auto taxi company Ayrat Gatin told Realnoe Vremya. “A person provides us with a driver's license. To get information about when and why he was deprived of his licence, it is enough to enter the license number in the search on the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate website. But if the deprivation period has expired, he passed the exams and received his license, we cannot refuse to hire him.”
Gatin emphasized that taxi companies that provide cars for rent are always interested in the “biography” of the driver, because they are interested in their safety. Those who have been deprived of their license and those who have a driver's license of the wrong type — migrants who received their license in their home country — receive a legal refusal.
“Now such people rarely contact us,” he noted. “As soon as the law banning migrants from working as taxi drivers came into force, most of them were automatically eliminated. But there are taxi companies that connect them to orders with forged documents, and they work. This is something that needs to be combated somehow. Migrants create competition for bona fide drivers, essentially taking away the orders that would be received by law-abiding taxi drivers with Russian licenses, with a normal accident history, in a good licensed car. We suffer from them too. Even if we don’t take them, we suffer losses.”
Relevant departments, the Ministry of Transport, should combat this, says Gatin — we need to “hunt” not only for such taxi drivers, but also for the taxi companies that provide them with work.
He also called on taxi passengers to fight against drivers who work illegally in the system. It's easy to do — if another driver comes to your call under the guise of one, you need to delve into his card and find out which company he is “tied” to, and then report this private company or individual entrepreneur to the Ministry of Transport.
Pre-trip medical examination by video
Lawyer for the Federation of Car Owners of Russia Vladlen Kopvillem also speaks about the lack of control over the condition of drivers and cars, as well as the citizenship of persons providing this type of service:
As for the ban on migrants working as taxi drivers, it does not actually work,” says Kopvillem, because this ban is easily circumvented: migrants register with the aggregator under “local names” with fake documents.
In his opinion, only strict control can ensure compliance with the law and the safety of not only passengers, but all road users. As for migrants, in his opinion, it is necessary to abandon the practice of granting them the right to work on the basis of patents:
“If a specific employer needs migrants, then he should be obliged to hire them and monitor their compliance with the law. I believe that the one who invites migrants should also pay for something like insurance in case of deportation of a migrant outside of Russia, for example, in the amount of the cost of an air ticket — so that the deportation does not take place at the expense of taxpayers. In my opinion, it is also necessary to complicate the process of obtaining Russian citizenship. Switzerland has a good example — to obtain citizenship, you must live there for at least 10 years with a permanent residence permit, pay taxes and have good recommendations from neighbours. We also need to exclude the possibility of re-entry into Russia for violators of immigration and criminal laws — take fingerprints from migrants. Otherwise, today he is expelled, and tomorrow he enters “clean before the law”: he changed one letter in the name or surname in the passport — and he is already a different person.
Not everything is subject to control
Commenting on the situation with the safety of taxi transportation, the republican Ministry of Transport emphasized that the ministry carries out control and supervision activities in this area with respect to compliance with the requirements established by the federal law on the organization of transportation of passengers and baggage by passenger taxis in the Russian Federation, on amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation and on the recognition of certain provisions of legislative acts of the Russian Federation as invalid and the law of the Republic of Tatarstan on the organization of transportation of passengers and baggage by passenger taxis in the Republic of Tatarstan. In particular, the Ministry monitors compliance with the requirements imposed on the driver of a passenger taxi, the carrier of a passenger taxi, and the service of ordering a passenger taxi.
“To consider the issue of granting a permit for a passenger taxi carrier in the Republic of Tatarstan, a certificate of the presence (absence) of a criminal record and (or) the fact of criminal prosecution or the termination of criminal prosecution on rehabilitating grounds is attached to the application, in accordance with which the Ministry makes a decision to grant a permit or to refuse to grant it,” the Ministry of Transport reported.
When asked what measures are taken to prevent the substitution of taxi drivers, they replied that the ordering services periodically conduct photo control in order to confirm the accuracy of the information about the driver's personal data, the presence of a vehicle in the register of passenger taxis and the presence of a permit for a passenger taxi carrier.
“Cases of unauthorized possession of a taxi driver’s profile in a mobile application of a taxi ordering service are currently not possible to track remotely,” the ministry added.
