Whether New York City can constitutionally use GPS devices to monitor cab drivers' movements and fares landed before a federal appeals court Thursday. The appeal spotlights the growing reach of tracking technology, which has been used to monitor everybody from public school students to garbage collectors, truckers, and now cab drivers. Nobody doubts that some cabbies overcharge tourists and those unfamiliar with New York's terrain. But what is being questioned is whether the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission can fine or fire drivers with data obtained from GPS devices that were installed without court warrants. The specific case before the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals concerns driver Hassan El-Nahal, who was accused of overcharging passengers. He lost and regained his taxi license several times. He sued on behalf of himself and others who were fined or who lost their taxi license due to information gathered from GPS devices. The trackers were installed on licensed cabs in 2007, and among other things, they monitor trip routes, trip times, and fees. A federal judge ruled against El-Nahal, and he appealed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Friday May 09 2014, @09:20PM
(1) NYC taxis are highly regulated with massively protectionists polices, live by the gun, die by the gun.
(2) Nowadays the drivers get screwed over by the regulations, only the rich can afford to own a taxi medallion anymore, [npr.org] so I sympathize with the drivers because the GPS can not tell the whole story. It doesn't record whether the traffic flow on the shorter routes is backed up at the time although a good driver would have real-time knowledge of that from dispatch and other drivers. So the information that is recorded is at best neutral and likely biased against the drivers.
(3) We've gone decades without GPSing these guys and (fingers-crossed) autonomous cars are set to annihilate the business in a generation. We can live without GPS micro-management until they die off anyway. Especially if it helps set a cultural precedent against the expansion of GPS micro-management into other parts of our lives.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Friday May 09 2014, @10:08PM
The reason cabbies are upset has little to do with Constitutional rights, and more about how they make money and can fuck off during working hours.
From a privacy perspective we are concerned about cab companies keeping records of customers travel and the government or other corporations accessing that data. It's a valid concern, but it gets conflated with why cabbies need to be tracked in the first place, and that cabbies should be entitled to privacy.
They have every incentive to screw over a passenger and charge more money. More distance means higher pay. Privacy for the cabbie is a ridiculous concern and disingenuous to the argument at hand. You're a business, not a person. Nobody cares about where the business is driving, or that they took a specific street more than others.
For cabbies wanting privacy it should be as simple as flipping a switch which controls the indicator on the top of the cab. Don't want to be tracked on your break? Then actually take a freakin' break and stop advertising that you are on the job. Become a person again, and not a business. People have rights, businesses have regulations.
If a cabbie works for a company, well then they just have to deal with that. The owner of the cab has every right to know where their property is and to conduct reasonable performance reviews with the technology available, and that is obviously going to be GPS. I'm guessing the issue with this is the city inspecting those business records and penalizing people that are abusing customers. Instead of addressing the issue of abuse, cabbies are just jumping on the anti-government bandwagon and complaining about the surveillance state.
To really change the game and remove the incentive for negative behavior you need to make the fare the same regardless of route. So instead of distance being measured as the car rolls along the ground, change it to "as the crow flies". Any New Yorker can visit the city website and figure out *exactly* how much it costs to go from one place to another. It's listed. For the difficulties of travelling across bridges that may make a fare unfair or unrealistic, just charge a flat bridge or tunnel fee.
The other argument for GPS, which would become the cabbies best friend, is that they represent a considerable amount of traffic. You put together all the cabbies in New York in an open community and they could register a travel plan and have the system automatically give them an optimum route for traffic. Whether or not it is a privatized solution, or a government one, traffic could be eased substantially by applying a little intelligence to all that traffic and giving cabbies different routes. AFAIK, Google is working on this too.
If the game changes to "as the crow flies" cabbies now have every incentive to get there in the least number of miles. That leads to greater fuel economy, less pollution, and greater productivity for New Yorkers since cab rides might take less time.
Or we can not do any of that so some bastard cabbies can continue screwing people over for more money.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 11 2014, @07:43AM
When a cab is stopped, the meter runs on time. A shorter distance with lots of stopping and waiting can cost more.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 12 2014, @04:11PM
I meant to comment on this a couple days ago, but busy weekend with the family happened.
A couple months ago I was walking my kid back from preschool in Park Slope, Brooklyn. At the corner of PS 295, an elementary school, my son and I and several other kids from the school, who had just been dismissed, were nearly run down by a green cab driver who charged the crosswalk we were in. I yelled at him that we were in the crosswalk, had the light, and the right-of-way. He screamed that he was going to kill all of us while salting his language liberally with racial epithets. He sped off as soon as I pulled out my phone to record the moment for posterity; I didn't get him on tape but I noted the number on top of his cab.
When I called the Taxi & Limousine Commission to complain, I carefully described the guy and gave them the number of the cab, but they told me that was unneeded because they had the GPS data from the cab and knew exactly who he was. The prosecutor telling me this said it was a pretty open-and-shut case, but I insisted on testifying anyway to make sure the psycho was taken off the streets. The driver's union rep must have advised him as much because it plead guilty and the case never went to trial. He got a $700 fine and two-month suspension.
So, in this case GPS was very helpful in punishing bad behavior by the cabbie, even if the ultimate outcome was sub-optimal in that the guy can still drive a cab once his suspension is over.
Washington DC delenda est.