The New Jersey Taxi Cab Association is putting a call out to Governor Christie and his administration to help put an end to the illegal actions of so-called “Transportation Network Companies” such as Uber and Lyft.

“As it stands today, companies like Uber and Lyft seem to operate across New Jersey with impunity even though their actions are illegal and too often dangerous,” stated Murray Rosenberg, President, NJTCA. “Governor Christie, himself a former prosecutor, needs to take a stand to protect his constituents when they ride in these illegally operating vehicles.

Rosenberg is directly referencing the fact that in New Jersey, as in most states, Uber and similar companies are not properly licensed and insured. In addition, Uber and Lyft refuse to provide proper fingerprint background checks on their drivers.

According to New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance Commissioner Ken Kobylowski, in a press release issued last year, “Car-sharing is growing in popularity with New Jersey consumers who are obtaining and providing transportation through Internet purveyors (Lyft, SideCar and Uber). In many cases, there may not be auto insurance coverage for these activities. There may also be legitimate coverage denials under personal automobile policies in the unfortunate event of an accident.”

In other words, passenger beware and ride at your own risk. “What we have here are billion dollar companies knowingly putting passengers and their own drivers at risk,” Rosenberg said. “Private passenger automobile policy does not cover commercial activity. If an Uber driver gets into a serious accident, who is going to pay for the medical bills or loss of income? The driver’s insurance company will view the driver as operating outside of policy and not pay the bills. Uber claims they will provide additional insurance but time and again Uber’s promises fail to deliver. The reality is both the driver and the rider will be out of luck in a serious accident as Uber moves onto finding more drivers and more passengers. For them it’s a numbers game without consequences.”

The other area of concern that Murray and the NJTCA are pressing the Christie Administration on is to get involved in the background checks. As it stands today, Uber and Lyft refuse to do background checks that include fingerprinting here in New Jersey as well as across the country.

“That to me is shocking,” stated Rosenberg. “We as an industry moved to fingerprinting as part of our background investigation into drivers for one simple reason, safety! How the wealthy executives at Uber can look themselves in the mirror knowing full well that unsuspecting passengers get into a car with just about anyone is beyond me.”

Recently in Houston, Texas, city officials enacted fingerprint background checks to prevent another case of a violent crime against an innocent passenger. The specific case that drove Houston to change their policy involved Uber driver Duncan Burton who was arrested in Houston and charged with assaulting a female passenger. Burton, who previously served 14 years for drug charges, was driving for Uber without a city permit.

“If the driver had been licensed by us, we would have been able to see he had been in federal prison two years ago and that he was on federal probation until 2017, both of those things would have immediately denied him a license,” said Houston spokeswoman Lara Cottingham.

As it stands today, cities in New Jersey are issuing tickets to Uber and Lyft drivers when they can. The challenge for law enforcement is not knowing which car is a general passenger car and which car is illegally operating as an Uber car.

“Our local law enforcement needs help. We are asking Governor Christie to step in and use his authority to require that companies like Uber and Lyft abide by the laws on books and require their drivers to be held to the same standard as taxi and limousine drivers,” Rosenberg added. “There have already been assaults in New Jersey associated with these operations. New Jersey passengers deserve better and need to know that the car they are getting into has the proper insurance and the driver has had the proper background check.”

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