8,000 Uber, Lyft, ride-hailing drivers fail new background checks in Massachusetts – The Boston Globe (Apr 5, 2017)

Massachusetts put in place a new law requiring drivers for ride sharing services to acquire a license, which in turn requires passing an extensive background check. Of the 71,000 existing drivers who applied, a little over 11% failed these background checks, in many cases because of issues with driver’s licenses, at least some of which should have been caught by Uber and Lyft. Those companies, in turn, countered that they either don’t have access to longer criminal histories or that they have deliberately ignored older offenses as a way to help people with troubled pasts move on. Though there’s some truth to the former point, the latter is at least partly spin. Sex offenders, of whom 51 were rejected by Massachusetts, have to register, and presumably blocking them from becoming drivers would be both easy and desirable, no matter how long ago the offenses. The Massachusetts law is stricter than in other states and as such helps highlight how the background checks the companies themselves conduct can miss potentially serious issues in drivers’ histories.

via Boston Globe


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