Burlington to inspect Uber drivers
Burlington will start to audit a sample of Uber drivers as part of a new agreement with the Silicon Valley ride-hailing company.
Twice a year, 25 Uber drivers who have given at least one ride in Burlington in the prior month will be subjected to a number of inspections under a memorandum of understanding adopted by an 8-2 City Council vote Monday night.
The agreement represents an effort to make sure that Uber drivers are complying with Burlington's Vehicle for Hire ordinances. City officials will check:
Proper registration and insurance coverage, both of the driver and of the driver's car.
That the car was made in this decade.
That the driver is at least 21 years old and has at least one year of driving experience.
Criminal record. A driver needs to be free of felonies and driving-related convictions.
An inspection also can be triggered if a driver receives a complaint. Rasier LLC, a Delaware company that is owned by Uber — the company that Burlington technically is contracting with — will help city inspectors obtain company information about drivers under the agreement.
The agreement also notes that any documents produced from an inspection will be confidential but still subject to Vermont's open-records law, which likely would mandate that the city publicly reveal many of the documents if requested. The agreement is in effect for one year, or until either Rasier or Burlington decide to cancel.
Councilors said that a lack of information made it impossible to know if the policy would be effective.
“It’s a joke that we don’t know how many Uber drivers there are in Burlington,” said David Hartnett I-North District, who ended up voting for the measure.
Uber withholds information about how many drivers are in a city, councilors said, and they are unsure if the city will be receiving a true sample of drivers to choose from for inspections.
“We don’t have any way to know if we’re picking out of a hat and if these are not the cleanest backgrounds you have ever seen,” said Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, who along with Selene Colburn, P-East District were the two councilors who voted against the memorandum.
Correction: David Hartnett, I-North District voted for the memorandum. An earlier version of the story noted that he voted against the measure.
This article was first posted online Sept. 19, 2016. Contact Cory Dawson at the office at 802-651-4826, on his cell at 802-338-0316 or via email at cdawson2@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Dawson_and_Co.
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