The city Taxi and Limousine Commission is looking to change work rules for cab drivers to make sure they're awake behind the wheel. NY1's Michael Herzenberg filed the following report.
For-hire drivers make up the vast majority of the Taxi and Limousine Commission licensed drivers and now the TLC wants to make sure they are well rested behind the wheel.
"That's luxury limo drivers, your local car based, Uber, Lyft, black cars so every driver is now going to have the same set of guidelines for safe driving," said TLC Commissioner Meera Joshi.
Currently, those operating the 13,500 yellow medallion cabs can't work more than 12 hours a shift. But the clock gets reset with any break.
The TLC's newly proposed rule would require eight hours of down time between shifts for all of the 140,000 registered drivers.
And they couldn't work for more than 12 hours in a day or 72 hours in a week.
Julio Marroquin likes this change. He says he's been a chauffeur for more than 20 years, dispatched by a black car company, but admits on a rare occasion he works slightly more than 12 hours.
"Personally I think it's right we need to take a rest," he said.
The TLC estimates three percent of drivers work more than 12 hours a day and seven percent work more than 72 hours a week. And if their behavior didn't change they'd be caught and fined.
"We're one of the very few jurisdictions that has trip records for all of our drivers so we'll use those trip records and we'll do regular audits of trip records so that it is not a matter of actual enforcement staff out on the street looking for drowsy drivers it's an automatic data run that we can do every month," Joshi noted.
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance issued a statement expressing concern over limiting drivers to a 72 hours work week. There's a public hearing scheduled for June 23 and the TLC is expected to vote on the proposed changes at the end of July.