So much for those attention-grabbing 7-8 figure settlements that sometimes make the news. The reality is much less money. $35k so tiny can be treated as a cost of doing business.
That was the amount awarded to a single claimant. Living in this area I can promise you that there is more than one disabled person in the BC's largest city.
Also they are required to begin providing acceptable service.
So the business impact is much more severe than writing a check and forgetting about it. Canadian regulators are more than happy to shut down your whole business if you fail to comply with tribunal orders.
In a strictly business sense, Uber made the right call. Paying $35,000 plus lawyers to learn this is a service they need to provide is cheaper than building it preemptively. In a human sense, it's pretty fucked.
Paying out 35k a ride on every 20 dollar canadian ride for a handicapped person is good business?
You're losing money on every transaction.
And no, you don't make it up in volume. You need to do 1750 other 20 dollar canadian rides just to make up for each handicapped ride. That's assuming you only want to break even, and you don't pay anything to your drivers.
I wonder if there will now be a large number of similar suits from others that have been discriminated against in the same way. Maybe the eventual total liability could be meaningful?
Auto-brail screen readers exist. If someone has the means or has a gov subsidy can read text on the internet Taxis to support wheelchair users don't, or at least done exist enough to subsist off the profit motives necessary to keep the service alive.
If someone had a government subsidy then they could use the money to pay the market price necessary to make such a service viable. If the government wants that subsidy, why should they impose that cost on a particular industry instead of paying for it out of the general fund?
