Damned if you do, damned if you don't—that appears to be Uber's stance toward its California drivers, as the company has allegedly recently suspended the driving privileges of up to a dozen Uber drivers who went ahead and registered their cars as commercial vehicles.
We suspect these Uber contractors' driving privileges will be restored fairly quickly, however; though Uber isn't saying a lot about the issue, the company sent a statement over to Gizmodo suggesting that this deactivation shouldn't have happened.
"How a driver registers his/her vehicle is up to that driver. Uber does not require a driver to register his/her vehicle as personal, and it is not our policy to deactivate a driver for registering his/her vehicle as commercial," said statement reads.
That's quite a change in policy compared to an email one suspended Uber driver received from the company this past December.
"We are showing your vehicle registration is actually a commercial vehicle registration. We will need you to contact the DMV to have them update your vehicle registration to personal/automobile registration. We are unable to accept commercial registration on an uberX account," read the email from an Uber Support employee.
So why, then, are Uber drivers even switching from personal to commercial vehicle registration—especially since it costs more, and typically requires much pricier commercial insurance for the vehicle itself? It probably doesn't help that California's Department of Motor Vehicles issued a public memo at the start of the month indicating that Uber drivers must do so.
"Any passenger vehicle used or maintained for the transportation of persons for hire, compensation, or profit is a commercial vehicle. Even occasional use of a vehicle in this manner requires the vehicle to be registered commercially," the memo read.
The DMV has since retracted that statement following criticism that the agency's ruling contradicted California law and previous rulings issued by the California Public Utilities Commission regarding personal vehicle use for ride-sharing services.
"Our responsibility is to notify the public of existing state law. In response to inquiries, the department issued an alert earlier this month that reflected the definition of a commercial vehicle under a 1935 law. However, there remains uncertainty about the interaction and effect of this law governing vehicle registration requirements with the more recent regulatory and statutory changes affecting ride share operators. We jumped the gun, and we shouldn't have. The matter requires further review and analysis which the department is undertaking immediately," reads a new statement from the California DMV.