Struggle session taxi driver drivers#
Struggle session taxi driver driver#
Struggle session taxi driver professional#

Struggle session taxi driver drivers#

In the past few weeks, as the spread of the coronavirus has intensified, what are the concerns you’re hearing from taxi drivers and for-hire vehicle drivers? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. City & State checked in with Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance – which advocates on behalf of taxi app-based and other drivers – on how drivers are responding, the actions she would like to see taken to protect them and more.

Not unlike transit workers or grocery store employees, taxi and ride-hailing drivers who are still working as the coronavirus pandemic spreads on a massive scale across New York are at risk of infection every day.

But with these issues far from solved, a colossal new problem has come along to wreak havoc on drivers’ livelihoods in a new way. Some preliminary steps have been taken to try to ameliorate that financial strain, like new minimum pay rules for app-based for-hire vehicle drivers in New York City, and a recently convened city task force recommending reforms for the taxi medallion system and relief for drivers. Livery and other for-hire cars won’t have to worry about the English section of any new classes, Daus said, because city law doesn’t require that they speak the language.In the past one to two years, anecdotal observations about the decline of the yellow taxi industry in New York City and the dire financial straits faced by cab drivers and app-based for-hire vehicle drivers alike have been brought into sharp focus with reporting on the predatory lending practices to taxi medallion owners and stories of multiple cab and ride-hailing drivers who have died by suicide.

Struggle session taxi driver professional#

“We’re going to wind up with real professional drivers.” “This, in my mind, promises to be big,” he said. He said some drivers could use training on speeding and cellphone use while driving.

Struggle session taxi driver driver#

“It’s so apparent, so obvious, and important that they do this,” said Andrew Vollo, who runs the Taxi and FHV Driver Institute at La Guardia Community College and plans to submit ideas. TLC-accredited taxi teachers said it was about time the agency revamped the curriculum. “We’re responding to complaints that rules are too complicated,” Daus said.

The new classes will make sure the drivers are current on the latest cab technology. “I think the continuing education of drivers can do more than that.”ĭrivers were struggling to keep up with the TLC’s rules, like understanding the credit- and debit-card reader systems that many hacks found confounding at first. “I don’t think we do enough, and I’d like to see more of it,” Daus said. “As long as we continue to get complaints about service, we’ll improve the programs,” Daus said.ĭaus said the current tests, after either one three-day course or a more extensive 10-day, 80-hour course, with a follow-up test one year later, simply weren’t hacking it. The document said the new set of sessions could include a test to assess how well drivers know English, the rules of the road and TLC mandates.Ĭurrent classes ask drivers to do role-playing exercises to learn how, for example, to deal with an unruly passenger. The agency is hoping the public will chime in and send ideas to the e-mail address by Aug. The plans were laid out in a request for information issued by the TLC late last week.Īs a result, every TLC-approved driver should become more professional, Daus said. They also will be required to take the same classes as the 47,000 yellow-cab drivers. Instead, the Taxi and Limousine Commission wants the hacks to take refresher courses for as long as they have a license, said agency head Matthew Daus.Īnd recess is over for the 53,000 for-hire limo, livery and black-car drivers. The city is looking to increase taxi-driver training in English, geography, driving skills, customer courtesy and all that new cab technology.Īlso, training cabbies will no longer be a two –classes-and-done education. Here’s a tip to cabbies who struggle with English or don’t know their way around town - there will be a test!