Canada’s taxi drivers have called on
Aviva to release numbers of the rideshare insurance policies it has sold, in order to quantify how many Uber drivers are now operating legally, with commercial insurance.
In a letter to Aviva CEO Greg Sommerville, Toronto Taxi Alliance (TTA) president Gail Souter and Canadian Taxicab Association (CTA) president Marc Andre Way, requested that Aviva release the number of such endorsements actually sold: "As we have been informed by a number of insurance professionals, the fact that a commercial endorsement is available does not mean any UberX drivers will purchase it.
"We are very concerned that an Aviva announcement that 'an approved product exists and is available for purchase' will be misconstrued by politicians to mean '20,000 illegal UberX drivers are now insured,” the letter said.
The TTA and CTA argue that the fact that a product is available does not mean that thousands of UberX drivers are going to announce that they are picking up paying passengers, and purchase Aviva insurance with the new endorsement.
"More likely, they will continue to do what they are doing now: carry only a personal policy and refrain from notifying their insurance company they are carrying passengers for compensation,” the organizations said.
Yet in the same letter, the TTA and CTA also requested that when the hybrid endorsement is actually launched, Aviva also make it available to licensed, regulated taxi drivers who meet the same conditions being set out for UberX drivers. A request that at face value appears to be a compromise.
