State Senate Committee on Insurance Votes for $750,000 Partial Coverage for TNCs

The bill, AB2293, that the committee passed on for a later vote on the Senate floor was disliked by almost everybody.

Uber and Lyft lawyers spoke against it because they want to limit coverage to only the time when their drivers are logged in with a passenger. They do NOT want to cover their drivers while they are logged in but don't have a customer. This makes economic sense. In that way the TNC's would save money on insurance premiums and wouldn't have their rates raised the next time one of their drivers kills a pedestrian while looking for a fare.

Taxi people spoke against the bill for several reasons:

• It drops coverage from $1,000,000 to $750,000.
• TNCs would not be covered if they pick up off the street or carry private customers.
• As to whether or not a driver was logged in when an accident occurred could be manipulated by either the driver or TNC companies like Uber & Lyft.
• Full-time commercial insurance is the only safe option for the public.
• The bill would codify "TNC" as a separate form of transportation than what already exists. It would create a new category of "charter party carriers" and pre-empt the court challenge of the CPUC's decision by the Taxi Paratransit Association of California (TPAC), which is already in the California court of Appeals.

Lyft, Sidecar & Uber Blow Smoke at CPUC All Party Meeting

You understand that "smoke" is a euphemism, a polite way of saying something crude but accurate. You all know what the word really stands for. What you may not understand is the extent, the amount, and the suffocating density of the "smoke" that filled the CPUC hearing room at 505 Van Ness yesterday.

CEO John Zimmer of Lyft, for instance, was talking about his superior "innovative" approach to safety which included NOT fingerprinting driver applicants at his company.  "Some people don't have fingerprints," he concluded.

In doing so, he uttered one of the few actual facts that passed through the lips of a TNC spokesperson during the hearing. Indeed, some people don't have fingerprints. I looked it up. There are three main conditions that cause this absence. The most common is Naegeli-Franceschetti-Jadassohn syndrome, which occurs in less than 1 in 1,000,000 people. The second most common is Adermatoglyphia, which affects only four extended families worldwide (including one in Sweden with 9 of 16 members having no prints). Coming in third is Dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis (DPR), with approximately 12 cases that have been reported since 1958.

Do you think that the FBI, NASA and my bank are going to give up fingerprinting on the basis of Zimmer's info? I think not.

 What Zimmer's statement demonstrated was the lengths to which he and his fellow TNC's will go to avoid spending so much as a dime on a thing that they consider as insignificant as the public's safety.

(To be continued later.)

Just as I was sitting down to hack out this post on these fork-tonged geeks, I received this message from Administrative Law Judge Robert M. Mason III of the CPUC,

Dear Parties and Counsel:

President Peevey has placed a one-meeting hold on this PD. What this means is that the Commission will vote on whether to approve the PD at the September 19, 2013 Commission meeting.

In other words, we don't have to get up early tomorrow. This means that I can watch the rest of the first season of Revolution tonight and deal with the techie snake-oil salesmen down the line.

Kudos your honor.