Anti-Uber Taxi Protest Blocks Access to Paris’s Roissy Airport

Anti-Uber Taxi Protest Blocks Access to Paris’s Roissy Airport
bloomberg.com

From my own personal experience, I have had the following incidents: 1) a taxi driver that took me the long way round from a train station to my home. Thinking I was a tourist, because of my accent, he basically tried to take me for a ride thinking I wouldn't notice. That lifted the bill by 50% compared to the usual price.

2) A taxi driver in Marseille that wouldn't finish the trip until I gave him my phone number. My choice was to either get out in the middle of one of the roughest neighbourhoods of Marseille and try and find another taxi, or hand over my phone number (which he verified by calling me on it before continuing) - I had to change my phone number after that one.

3) Countless occassions of having taxis refusing to take me as a customer because I wanted to go to a part of the city they didn't want to go to. One particular occassion struck me as bad - I had the car door open and one foot off the ground when he realised where I wanted to go and took off. Considering I was a lone 35-yr old woman at the time, dressed in a business suit, he obviously wasn't worrying about his safety.

4) I have a friend who actually works in the Boers (mentioned in the article). When I'm out with him, he won't let me get into a taxi until he's checked the guy's (most taxi drivers are men, and on the rare occassion I've had a female driver, they have been nothing but professional - make of that what you will) papers and flashed his badge to keep the driver on his best behaviour).

5) If I move my grievances out to people one removed from me (ie people I personally know), you can add in a guy getting physically hauled out of a taxi and beaten by the driver because the driver didn't want to go where he wanted, another guy getting hit by a taxi when walking across a pedestrian crossing, only to have the taxi driver get out of his vehicule, abuse and kick said friend for slowing him down, and then driving off, and a taxi that took off with a friend's luggage in the boot, which he never got back.

So yeah, I have about zero sympathy for French taxi drivers - the sooner they're run out of business, the better. Their latest behaviour has just confirmed for me that I won't ever be using one again if I can avoid it.

The best part: Uber is managing to address problems people have been wanting to address for decades but been unable to, as those strikes can be politically devastating.

I bet the government is privately patting themselves on the back that a nice, foreign entity is willing to take the heat and provide the hammers for taxi drivers to keep driving those nails deeper into their own coffins.

When a taxi driver gang is beating up an UberPOP driver or burning his car after turning it over, the average French citizen is seeing himself, an average dude just trying to sweeten his end of month by driving people around, and the commercial dispute becomes a crusade of the right of the common man versus a gang of uncontrollable bullies. Well played Uber, amazing PR.