Proposed Ban on Taxi Drivers Working More Than 12 Hours by Ministry of Transportation

Moscow, March 2 – The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has prepared a project according to which taxi drivers will not receive new orders from aggregators after 12 hours of work, and the measure is aimed at improving transportation safety, the Izvestia newspaper wrote on Thursday.

According to Izvestia, the driver will not be able to work 12 hours without a break: no later than five hours after the start of the shift, he must take a break. Otherwise, it will temporarily stop receiving orders. The number and duration of rest periods is determined by the employee. However, the total pending time for order transfer shall not exceed five hours.

The Ministry of Transport project will also regulate the number of applications received. Until the taxi driver finishes the previous trip, the service will not present him with a new order.

Despite all the obvious advantages for the safety of both carriers and passengers, experts note that the technical side needs to be improved. Thus, Anton Shabarin, Vice-President of the National Automobile Federation, noted that many taxi drivers work with several aggregators, which means that it is possible, having exhausted the limit from one service, for a taxi driver to start working through another.

Also, the rules established by the project may introduce a number of inconveniences to drivers. Many passengers complain about the driver waiting for the previous trip to finish. Failure to receive requests continuously can lead to an increase in traffic violations associated with, for example, improper parking, or an increase in the mileage, since taxi drivers will have to travel without a passenger.