Most Rideshare Drivers Lack Insurance

An Uber protest in Portland, Ore.

By JoAnne Powers

Justin LaPlante is a former cab driver and the administrator of Ride Safe Madison, a non-profit rideshare and taxi safety resource in Southern Wisconsin.

For the last two years LaPlante has been investigating rideshare companies’ operations. After discovering drivers were able to get on both Uber and Lyft with fake documentation, they tried it themselves, getting a driver approved by Uber with unconvincingly fake insurance and vehicle registration documents:

“Not only did our driver successfully get onto the app, but as we’ve been looking at vehicles that operate for Uber and Lyft, we noticed that there are already and have been, for a long time, drivers that are using vehicles that are out of registration, that have the wrong plate number on the wrong vehicle. It’s too easy. In a desperate economic market, when something easy comes up, it’s like flies to honey,” LaPlante said,

LaPlante is far more concerned about the insurance situation for rideshare drivers, many of whom are voiding their policies by not informing the insurance company of their Rideshare activities

“The estimation from different media sources, and our own, is that no less than 97 percent of the rideshare drivers out there do not have the proper insurance to cover a customer in the vehicle or if they themselves get into a wreck while driving for a rideshare. The entire cost falls on the driver and the customer.”

WI Right-to-Work Law Challenged in Federal Court

By JoAnne Powers

International Union of Operating Engineers Locals 139 and 420 in Wisconsin have filed suit in federal court challenging the state’s so-called right-to-work law.

The suit claims the law violates the National Labor Relations Act. The law, which would prevent unions from collecting fees from non-members who benefit from its services, is currently suspended on appeal after being struck down by a circuit court judge last month in a separate lawsuit.