Canada Fines Company for Advocating Carpooling
Canada Has Spent Billions On Carpool Lanes, But The Courts Are Now Forbidding Their Use By An Online Ridesharing Website.
Sit down, these rules are crazy (it’s like those crazy sodomy laws no one follows):
- You must travel from home to work only - nowhere else!
- You cannot cross municipal boundaries
- You must ride with the same driver each day
- You must pay the driver no more frequently than weekly
The issue is not only that PickupPal’s site allows drivers and passengers to connect for carpooling. While it is up to the users to determine compensation, apparently the site “does nothing to check on insurance, roadworthiness of the vehicles, driving history, or anything else.” This worried the Highway Transport Board most.
As we all know that carpooling or public transport can lead to things like decapitation or movies like Speed - no one wants that. So the court ruled that PIckupPal owes CAN$2,836.07 to the province and another CAN$8,500 to Trentway-Wagar.
But Trentway-Wagar says its beef was simply that it is unfair they have to meet labor, environmental, and equipment standards to haul passengers around when services like PickupPal can arrange rides without doing any of that. Hey, I can get behind that (insert sodomy joke here).
And while your inner-hippy might be annoyed by this bump in the road, know that small (and totally unlicensed) businesses have developed around websites like this, and Craigslist. And it’s these illegal ventures that have led to serious tragedies in the past.
Image: Mr. T in DC on Flickr under Creative Commons
You say ‘the province’ - which province?
the province is ontario @ above.
The problem lies within the law that you must be licensed to use public car pool lanes especially when providing a service for a fee. I dont agree with it and I hope like many BS laws people will take little notice and continue.
When in the Great White North, better take the bus, eh?
“And while your inner-hippy might be annoyed by this bump in the road, know that small (and totally unlicensed) businesses have developed around websites like this, and Craigslist. And it’s these illegal ventures that have led to serious tragedies in the past.”
fine the offending business, not PickupPal
oh jeez, those laws are ridiculous!
I know that we’re tired of politics, but this sounds like a good subject to lobby for…
Shouldn’t be too hard to have changed, anyway.
This is only in one province of Canada. Not all of Canada. Your title is misleading.
Insert anti-canada joke here
That has to be one of the best articles I have read for a long while, short, funny and balanced. Nice.
re: Lambdino
Insert…okay, I will stop that there.
re: job
Thanks! You might be surprised, but positive feedback is rare in the webosphere. Thanks for reading!