UPDATED 14:56 EDT / JUNE 26 2018

APPS

In major legal win, Uber dodges ban that would have kept it out of London

A British court today overturned a ban that would have prevented Uber Technologies Inc. from operating in London, sparing the ride-hailing giant from getting locked out of one of its biggest markets.

Uber has more than 3.6 million regular users and about 45,000 drivers in the English capital. The company’s vast local operations came under threat of closure last September when Transport for London, the city’s transportation authority, ruled that it’s not a “fit and proper operator.”

The decision was accompanied by a refusal to renew Uber’s London license. In today’s ruling, Judge Emma Arbuthnot granted the company a provisional 15-month permit to continue providing its services in the city. Arbuthnot said after the proceedings that the goal is to give transportation regulators and Uber the opportunity to “test out the new arrangements.”

These “arrangements” include an extensive list of caveats. Going forward, Uber will have to undergo an independent review every six months and must start updating regulators about every change to its policies.

The ruling also requires Uber to address the issues that drove Transport for London to refuse renewing its license in the first place. At the time, one of the biggest concerns that the agency cited was passenger safety.

Uber will now have to inform authorities about serious incidents itself instead of relying on passengers and drivers to do so, as well as file a report when a driver is removed from its platform. Moreover, the ruling requires the company to let drivers operate only in the specific regions where they have a license to work from Transport for London.

The list of requirements imposed on Uber extends to other areas as well. The company must now, among other things, mandate that drivers take a six-hour safety break after every 10 hours of work.

Uber has already been enforcing this last policy as a result of a series of operational changes it made while appealing Transport for London’s decision. During the court proceedings today, the company’s lawyers said it had passed all three of the most recent inspections carried out by the transportation authority.

Uber and the other tech firms in the so-called “gig economy” are facing mounting pressure from regulators all over the world. Much of the scrutiny so far has focused on the status of the workers who use their services. In May, Uber rolled out a free insurance package for drivers across 21 European Union member states as part of an effort to assuage some of these concerns.

Image: Unsplash

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