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Comment by greatpatton | Hacker News Reader

But the same rules applied to all taxi drivers before Uber. In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them, and the price is controlled almost everywhere. The logic would be that all taxi drivers have to been employed.

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> In a lot of place taxi driver were forbidden to not accept customer hailing them

I've hang out with my fair share of taxi drivers around the world (mainly Europe and South America) but never once heard of them being forbidden of not accepting customers, and heard plenty of stories when someone really fucked up tried to hail them but they declined. It doesn't mean it's not forbidden, but hard to reconcile my understanding.

What places are you specifically thinking about where taxi drivers are not free to chose their customer?

Personenbeförderungsgesetz (PBefG) § 22 Beförderungspflicht which applies to taxis in Germany. Roughly translates to:

Human Transportation Act §22 Duty to Transport.

In New York, the taxis with "medallions" are required to take you to places within the metro area. I'm not sure at what point that requirement sets in, whether it's hailing, or once you're in the cab, etc. but it's well-known that you can report them for refusing to take you somewhere.

It depends, there's a lot of local and national regulations in different countries.

For example in my part of the UK, only designated taxis can pick up ride hailers on the street, sort of like black cabs in London.

Private firms who use their own fleet of cars can only offer pre-booked services, e.g. pre booked airport runs.

Uber and co. shook this up a bit by offering a grey area, where the taxi ride isn't exactly hailed on the street (instead through the app) and is sort of "pre-booked" when you request it as the driver has to accept the job.

> For example in my part of the UK, only designated taxis can pick up ride hailers on the street, sort of like black cabs in London.

Yeah, that makes sense, that's the only thing I've seen around the world as well. But can these designated taxis reject customers at will? That was my question.

Practically, they can but I'm not sure about the regulations. Interesting question though.

In most countries Taxi drivers cannot refuse a passenger hailing them. Its difficult to enforce and they normally claim they did not see you but they must take you:

UK:

"Cabbies can be penalised for refusing passengers" https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/ltagov/en/newsroom/2019/8/3/c...

Canada - Montreal:

https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/pls/portal/docs/page/bur_taxi_f...

"Le titulaire d'un permis de chauffeur de taxi ne peut refuser d'effectuer une course"

France:

"Normalement, un taxi n'a pas le droit de refuser une course sauf si vous êtes à 50 mètres d'une borne de taxi et qu'un taxi attend à cette borne"

https://www.europe1.fr/societe/taxi-ce-qui-est-legal-et-ce-q....

and so on...

The difference here is that these requirements are not set by a company contracting you to drive for them.

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