Maryland Uber riders rejoice: the ride-sharing giant isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Less than a month after Uber threatened to leave this state if it upheld a fingerprint-based background check requirement, state regulators said Thursday they would accept the company’s waiver, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Lyft, another ride-sharing corporation that had not threatened to remove its services, also applied for and received a waiver.
The exemption comes with provisions. For the waiver to stand, both companies must be “rerunning their own background checks on all drivers annually, committing to auditing and accrediting by an arm of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners, and alerting regulators to any changes to their background check process,” the Sun reported.
Licensed professionals such as taxicab drivers must have their fingerprints checked against state and federal databases to operate in this state. The Maryland General Assembly expanded this requirement to drivers for ride-sharing companies in 2015.
Uber made the case during a three-day hearing with the state’s Public Service Commission last month that its screening process is comprehensive and accurate, including a “third-party, nationally-accredited professional background screening firm that goes directly to the source of someone’s official criminal history — the actual courthouse records,” according to Uber data.
Proponents for Uber noted its background checks, which rely heavily on conviction history, are also less likely to punish minorities.
“It is an unfortunate truth that African Americans are arrested at higher rates proportional to their percentage of the population,” Prince George’s County Delegate Dereck Davis wrote in a letter last month. “Thousands of citizens who have been arrested and fingerprinted but never charged with a crime run the risk of being unfairly barred from economic opportunities.”
Getting fingerprint-based background checks could cost drivers their own time and money as well, and “disincentivizes people and raises more barriers to earn money and to work without any added benefits,” an Uber spokesman told The Diamondback earlier this month.
Some individuals, however, disagreed with Thursday’s announcement. Dwight Kines, Transdev on Demand vice president, said that “the public knows when they get into a cab or a traditional for-hire sedan, the drivers have been fingerprinted and are safer,” the Sun reported.
While Uber and Lyft have made a name for themselves in the Old Line State — Uber has given more than 10 million rides and employed nearly 30,000 drivers in the last two years — safety concerns have come to light in recent months.
An Uber driver in this state was arrested and charged in late October in connection with kidnapping and assaulting a female passenger. Instead of taking her to her home in Fairfax County, Virginia, he took her to the Budget Inn, a College Park motel.