Power to the smartphones! The High Court has ruled in favour of Uber this morning after Transport for London and the taxi lobby asked it to clarify whether smartphones in private hire vehicles counted as taximeters. In the ruling, Mr Justice Ouseley said that the drivers’ app may be essential for calculating the fare but that did not make it the device ‘for’ calculating in the fare — which would have put Uber in breach of taximeter laws:
‘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 forwards 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.’
Londoners will be rejoicing that they are able to continue using Uber, which offers a cheaper and frequently better service than traditional black cabs.
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