The State Duma adopted a law on compulsory liability insurance for taxi drivers

On June 13, the State Duma immediately adopted in the second and third readings a law extending the norms of compulsory civil liability insurance of carriers (OSGOP) to passenger taxis. If approved by the Federation Council and signed by the President, it will enter into force on September 1, 2024.

The head of the parliamentary committee on the financial market, Anatoly Aksakov, during his speech in the Duma, explained that the law would allow raising the amount of payments to citizens and their heirs by 4 times in case of taxi accidents in case of harm to life or health (from 500,000 to 2 million rubles – Vedomosti) ). The fee for this type of insurance, according to him, should be only about 2,500 rubles. per year (quote from Interfax).

Now, payments to taxi passengers, unlike other types of public transport, are made only under the OSAGO law, where the maximum limit of the insurer’s liability for damage to life and health under the policy is 500,000 rubles.

According to the bill adopted by the State Duma, a legal entity or an individual entrepreneur will not be able to engage in taxi transportation until they insure their liability for at least 2 million rubles. for causing harm to the life of each passenger. The OSGOP agreement will need to be concluded within 60 days after the entry into force of the law.

The bill was submitted to the lower house in 2018, was adopted in the first reading and has since been finalized. The taxi market participants have a lot of complaints about the document. This follows from a letter sent on June 9, 2023 by Irina Zaripova, Chairman of the Public Council for Taxi Development, to Larisa Brycheva, Head of the State Legal Department of the Presidential Administration (Vedomosti has a copy).

The letter states that the bill contains requirements “critical for the practical implementation” of the federal law on taxis, adopted at the end of 2022, which is due to enter into force in September 2023. OSGOP agreement in relation to a passenger taxi vehicle, since in practice a self-employed taxi driver can rent up to several dozen different taxi cars a year,” she notes. The result, according to Zaripova, will be the legalization of the shadow taxi market, and the reform of taxi transport will be jeopardized.

The head of the competence center of the international Eurasian Taxi forum, Stanislav Schwagerus, also calls this insurance mechanism “unrealizable”: “Each self-employed driver is obliged to insure his liability for each new taxi car he is going to work on. The practice is that self-employed drivers change cars several dozen times a year.”

The excessive requirements of the law on OSGOP for taxis will not allow the self-employed to come out of the shadows, and the only ones who will benefit from its passage are insurance companies, Zaripova told Vedomosti. She also recalled that today, in addition to 500,000 rubles pledged as compensation under OSAGO, a passenger in the event of serious harm to his health or death (payments then go to relatives) also receives insurance from large taxi ordering services (aggregators) in the amount of 2 million rub.

In the letter, Zaripova indicates that, in fact, we are talking about “an unprecedented introduction of a quasi-tax payment from each taxi driver in favor of financial capital” under the pretext of ensuring the financial security of passengers. According to the estimates of the Public Council for the Development of Taxi, we are talking about 3 billion rubles. in year.

Vedomosti sent a request to the Ministry of Transport and Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov.

Taxi aggregators, as expected, reacted negatively to the adoption of the draft law by the State Duma. The representative of “Citymobil” noted that with its adoption, the cost of insurance will increase, which will provoke an increase in taxi prices. The representative of the taxi “Maxim” generally claims that the industry “may stop” after the entry into force of the new law. “Applications and websites of aggregators will be subject to blocking for transferring orders to persons without a taxi permit, and there will be no legal carriers, because the introduced requirements are obviously impossible for drivers,” he is categorical. The press service of Yandex. Taxi did not respond to a request.

The All-Russian Union of Insurers (VSS) and the Bank of Russia support the adoption of the bill. A representative of the press service of the Central Bank told Vedomosti that the law would improve the financial protection of taxi passengers. “It is expected that the law will come into force on September 1, 2024. By this time, the Bank of Russia will conduct the necessary studies and calculate insurance rates for this category of carriers,” he added.

The ARIA representative says that, according to the Union’s preliminary calculations, the new type of insurance will cost 56 kopecks. for each trip, and the cost of the policy “will be about 2,500–3,000 rubles. in year”. He also recalled that in some cases, a passenger injured in an accident cannot receive a CMTPL payment. “The person who caused the harm is exempted from paying compensation if he proves that the harm was not caused through his fault,” the interlocutor specified.

It is impossible to say that a taxi passenger is not protected in any way, says Ilya Zharsky, managing partner of the Veta expert group. But the taxi fleet, the driver, the owner of the vehicle and the taxi aggregator service, as a rule, are interconnected only at the marketing level, he recalled. “When it comes to compensation for the damage caused to the passenger and his property as a result of an accident, most often the situation is resolved in court,” says Zharsky, specifying that all parties “are trying to avoid responsibility and shift it” to others. He adds that the practice of recent years is developing in favor of the affected passengers, but the amount of damages compensated is often incomparable with the declared one.

Taxi is an emergency mode of transport: the frequency of accidents due to the fault of its drivers is 7 times higher than the average frequency of accidents in the country, the representative of the ARIA noted, and the share of taxi drivers who do not get into accidents was only 12% in 2022. The Public Council for the Development of Taxi provides counterarguments: Yandex. Taxi” in 2022, the share of trips in which there were accidents with victims decreased by 11% year-on-year. From the number of all trips to Yandex. Taxi” is 0.00066%.

Kirill Yankov, chairman of the Union of Passengers, notes that, firstly, not all aggregators have a voluntary fund to compensate for damage, and secondly, there are taxi companies that operate without aggregators. Therefore, the decision to extend OSGOP to taxis is correct, but now it is impossible to calculate its impact on the fare. If OSGOP is introduced, then it is necessary to reduce prices for prohibitively expensive OSAGO for taxis, he added. Schwagerus also recalls that the OSAGO problem has not been solved in taxis: “Only 40% of legal taxis are insured.”

This is not the first complaint against the new bill. At the end of May, as RBC wrote, Opora Rossii sent a letter criticizing the project to the Federation Council. The organization pointed to the risks of increasing the cost of taxi services, the fading of 1 million self-employed taxi drivers and social tension from the introduction of a mandatory type of insurance in addition to OSAGO.

Denis Ilyushenkov contributed to the preparation of the article