"New York Cabs Gouged Riders Out of Millions"
I really doubt this gouging happened on anything like the scale the TLC suggests. If riders were overcharged on "more than 1.8 million trips," certainly there would have been, say, 1800 actual complaints (that is one out of one THOUSAND fares). But the TLC does not report even a single complaint. (Even in the notorious recent Cheema case, there was NO passenger complaint!) And under TLC rules, even a $10 overcharge merits license revocation. Yet there are few if any actual prosecutions.Maybe the TLC doesn't know how to read the data. That seems more likely as the agency is staffed by mostly incompetents, including and especially outgoing commissioner Daus.
Also: The math doesn't work at all:
"The scam was primarily perpetrated by a small number of drivers, with 3,000 of them overcharging more than 100 times, the agency said."
3000 x 125 [more than 100] = 375,000
Yet in the very next sentence, the article claims: "1.8 million overcharged trips."
There is a 1.4 million trip disparity!
More troubling is the exchange between the Bhairavi Desai of the Taxi Worker's Alliance [full disclosure I have reperesented the TWA on other issues] and Daus:
The taxi industry vigorously challenged the city's findings, saying it was unimaginable that such a pervasive problem could be the result of deliberate fraud. The city said that 35,558 out of the city's roughly 48,000 drivers had applied the higher rate.
This is clearly a systematic failure on the part of the meters and the technology, said Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents cabbies.
For this to be so widespread --nearly every single driver -- makes no sense, she added.The taxi commission refused to comment on the alliance's claim, citing its continuing investigation. "We have to sort through the numbers," Mr. Daus said.
If the TLC is still "sorting through" the numbers, why go public?
The TLC is just not a trustworthy source, and the story is basically a rewrite of a TLC release issued late on a Friday afternoon. The Times should really check this stuff out first.
