Taxis|The aim is to improve the safety of taxis by strengthening the professionalism of drivers.
For the taxi industry the grievances that have arisen are to be rectified. The purpose of the changes is to increase trust in the taxi industry and improve safety.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications has sent for the statement round evaluation memorandum of proposed actions. Statements will be collected until Midsummer’s Eve, and changes to the taxi legislation are supposed to be considered by the parliament next spring.
The aim is to improve the safety of taxis by strengthening the professionalism of drivers. Among other things, the memo proposes that mandatory taxi driver training be reintroduced. Changes would be made to taking the driver’s test, for example by means of different grace periods and by improving the supervision of the tests. The responsibility for organizing the test would be given to the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom).
In the memo ways to combat the gray economy and improve the recognizability of taxis and price marking are also discussed.
“The evaluation report contains plenty of concrete proposals to restore confidence in the taxi industry. We want to fix the taxi legislation properly, safety first. I hope for plenty of statements from the stakeholders so that we can build the best possible outcome together,” says the Minister of Transport and Communications Lulu Wrist (ps) in the bulletin.
A taxi obtaining a driver’s license would be tightened. According to the evaluation memorandum, a wider set of criminal convictions than the current one would be an obstacle, such as possession of a dangerous object, fraud and payment instrument crime. Nowadays, sexual crimes, drug crimes, drunk driving and robberies are counted as obstacles to the granting of a driver’s license.
According to the memorandum, a traffic error fee could be imposed in the future for the lack of taxi lights and price marking. Monitoring would be enhanced by connecting the vehicle to a taxi license.
In the further preparation, the Ministry of Transport and Communications intends to find out whether it would be possible to start collecting information about the taxi business in a new kind of cloud-based system. The goal here too is to combat the gray economy.
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According to the memo, the obstacle would be a wider set of criminal convictions than the current one, such as possession of a dangerous object, fraud and payment instrument crime.
About the taxi reform was decided Juha Sipilä During the (central) government, the Minister of Transport and Communications by Anne Berner (central) led. The goal was to increase competition and flexibility and promote the use of new technology.
However, the mild effects of the reduction in regulation have been seen, for example, as a weaker service in sparsely populated areas. In addition, there has been a labor shortage in the more populous areas, when the attractiveness of the job of a taxi driver has decreased due to the decrease in earnings.
The competition for customers has intensified, especially in the largest cities, where prices may have fallen when different application-based ordering methods have become available. Citizens’ trust in the uniform quality of taxi services has weakened during the reform. It appears from Traficom’s surveys that the perception of the safety of taxis in particular is worse than before.
“It is possible that, for example, individual cases of fraud, traffic accidents or disruptive behavior by taxis may have increased the general experience of the insecurity of taxi services, even if there has been no significant change in the actual security of the services,” states the evaluation memo.
When the current government started, the goal of improving consumer confidence in taxi traffic, promoting the availability of taxis and enhancing the supervision of the industry was written into the government program.
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