FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS WHEN IS A METER NOT A METER?
You would not believe the number of enquiries that have come in to both PHTM and the NPHTA in recent weeks on the sub- ject of taximeters, PDAs, smartphone apps, and when and how these devices are used to determine fares – both for hackney car- riages and private hire vehicles.
Here is a selection of questions asked and points raised:
Q. WHAT IS THE EXACT DEFINITION OF A TAXIMETER?
A. The taximeter is a mechanical or (more likely these days) electronic device utilised in HCs – and a large number of PHVs - that calculates the fares based on a combina- tion of distance travelled and journey duration, including waiting time.
Q. WHAT FARE STRUCTURE SHOULD BE DISPLAYED ON HC METERS?
A. The tariff(s) displayed on a HC taximeter must be the maximum fares as set by the local authority; the proprietor/driver can charge below those rates, but cannot charge above those fares unless the jour- ney goes outside the district and the fare is agreed beforehand with the passenger. The taxi tariff structure is in itself a byelaw and is governed by local legisla- tion.
Q. WHAT IS THE POSITION ON FARES CHARGED BY HCs DOING PH WORK?
A. The driver of a HC used for PH outside their district must not charge “more than the rate of fares or charges not greater than that fixed by the byelaws or tables mentioned in… this Act…” (Local Govern- ment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 section 67). Confusion can arise when hackneys are doing PH work totally remotely from their licensing district: what fares do they charge? If they are the fares for the PH firm on whose circuit they are driving, what are they supposed to show on the meter? Fares “as fixed by the byelaws” must pertain to their own licensing area; what if the PH rates are higher? This has been a grey area for quite some time… which is why the use of HCs for remote PH work defeats the intention of localism behind our existing legislation.
Q. WHAT REGULATES THE MANUFACTURE AND USE OF TAXIMETERS?
A. All meters in current use must adhere to the Measuring Instruments Directive (MID) 2014/32/EU regulations. That applies to any meters used by either HCs or PHVs… if they are the hard-wired calibrated meters as mentioned above.
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Q. WHAT ABOUT METERS IN PHVs? A. Section 71 LGMPA 1976 states that there is no requirement for PHVs to have a meter; however if they do, the meter must be tested and approved by any council by which the PHV was granted a licence. So this is the crux: the legislation doesn’t state they MUST have; it says they MAY have.
Q. THE PH OPERATOR I’M DRIVING FOR STILL USES PDAS. IS THIS OK?
A.With the advent of the PDA (Personal Digi- tal Assistant), the use of meters in PHVs started to decline in favour of more portable units that often formed part of the booking and dispatch system. The City of Cardiff Council considered this issue in August 2015; whilst the council deemed that a PDA could be used in PHVs subject to amendment of the council’s local licensing conditions, it “… cannot be considered a taximeter in hackney carriages as [it] does not comply with the Measuring Instruments (Taximeters) Regulations 2006.”
A. PDAs for the most part have soon dated in comparison to today’s smartphone adapt- ability. You all know how smartphones work; in relation to working out PH fares, the app – which is frequently part of a full booking and dispatch system – can often advise the passenger of that fare before the journey starts. Certainly it cannot be relied upon to determine the calibrated fare at the end of the journey.
Q. IS A SMARTPHONE LEGALLY A METER? A. In the Administrative Court in 2015 Trans- port for London (TfL), along with Uber, the LTDA and the LPHCA asked the court for a declaration whether smartphones are actually taximeters, bearing in mind that London PHVs are prohibited from using a meter.
A. In his judgment Mr Justice Ouseley declared: “A smartphone is not a devise for calculating fares even with the driver’s app; this makes it a device for obtaining fare-related inputs, transmitting them, and receiving the calculation back. “…A taximeter, for the purposes of Section 11 of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, is not a device which receives GPS signals in the course of a journey, and for- wards GPS data to a server located outside of the vehicle, which calculates a fare that is partially or wholly determined by reference to distance travelled and time taken, and sends the fare information back to the device.”
A. He said that whilst the smartphone with
the app may be essential to enabling the calculation of fares to take place, that did not make it a device “for” calculating fares in breach of the taximeter prohibition. Sig- nificantly, he also found that it was the drivers, not their vehicles, who are “equipped” with smartphones.
A. This declaration shows that an app is not a meter. In essence smartphones are now having PDA software installed to estimate fares in the same way that a PDA operates.
Q. IN PRACTICAL TERMS, WHY IS IT THAT A SMARTPHONE CAN NEVER BE A METER?
A. The calibration criteria for a taximeter requires the unit to acquire the M rating (from MID) – which does not apply to an app since an app is not a taximeter. Fur- ther, it has been reported that often the driver’s app goes through a black spot and out of signal, either for the phone’s SIM card or the GPS signal, and therefore the fare is disrupted and often registers back to £0.00 – or at best produces an inaccu- rate fare.
A. Also, bearing in mind the Justice’s words “equipped”, since an app is handheld (or dashboard-mounted portably), by its very nature it is not hard-wired and cannot pos- sibly be calibrated to the vehicle, since one driver with the app may take that hand- held portable device from one vehicle to another.
Q. WHAT ARE THE SAFETY IMPLICATIONS OF USING SMARTPHONES OR PDAS?
A. Concerns have been voiced to licensing authorities on the basis of public safety as well: allowing the use of a smartphone or similar device could well lead to problems in the future where the driver could jump into an unlicensed vehicle and pick up pas- sengers, and the customer would not be aware it was not a licensed PHV because they were used to being shown a phone or PDA with the fare displayed on it.
A. Again, this whole topic highlights the inconsistency amongst licensing authori- ties across the entire UK, and the reason why the Government approved the Task and Finish recommendations for minimum national standards – both for drivers and vehicles.
A. Bring it on… but when?
Donna Short 0161 280 2800
info@nphta.co.uk www.nphta.co.uk
MARCH 2020
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