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Apparently ,if you apply for permission to have friends in your car, you have an acceptance chance of like 5%.........



Could our members here recall any country, apart from maybe North Korea or places like Turkmenistan, or Mongolia where such laws exist.........i.e. you have to get prior permission to have people share your car, and even then, the govt accepts only 5% of such applications...?



From today's Gulf News........

Car pooling service fails to gather speed
By Ashfaq Ahmed, Chief Reporter
Published: January 28, 2009, 22:48


Dubai: Applications of thousands of motorists, who wanted to share their cars with friends and colleagues, have been turned down, due to the strict policy adopted by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

Only 108 permits were issued in the first month of the campaign launched in July 2007 while 4,286 people applied for the service, Gulf News has learnt.

So far less than 200 permits have been awarded in the first six months of legalising the car pooling service while around 8,000 people have applied for the permits, according to sources in the RTA.

on what grounds are people getting turned down?

personally experienced by anyone here?

I thought Dubai was a "free market economy" , so how come taxi companies have so much clout?

Sources said thousands of applications were rejected because of pressure from taxi agencies, who fear a reduction in the number of passengers if more permits are issued.

"I applied for the permit at least twice but my application was rejected for no reasons," said K.M., a motorist, who does not want to be identified. He said he wanted to share his car with his neighbours but now four of them drive separately from Sharjah to Dubai. "We could have used one car, had we got the permission," he said.

BlackburnRovers wrote:Sources said thousands of applications were rejected because of pressure from taxi agencies, who fear a reduction in the number of passengers if more permits are issued.

Do you realize that this is an open admission of corruption? They come up with a law/rule and and then they bypass it because one party pressurizes them to do so? what the heck.

why do you need a permit to have people in your car?

(sorry, don't really know much about this carpooling permit thing that's going on)

wishmaster wrote:If some1 is going to pick his date, dose he need permit from RTA?

hahahaha

yes you do

Its the old old thing here; "their's never a problem until their's a problem" meaning that if the Police pull you over and you have a non family member in the car they can make a problem out of it. It is simply the most ridiculous thing but it does exist and it is caused by 1000's of illegal taxi's running around.

I know many guys in Dubai who go to work in 1 car. Does that mean any vehicle holding more than its driver should be pulled over and checked? Who would do that in the pile of the morning?

Besides, Taxis in Dubai are never sufficient during rush hours. So no much threat to them after all. Unless they are brutal enough to expect people to wait for more than an hour in some areas to get into one.

I know that Taxi companies are monopolized and conspiracy theory could prevent the idea of Dubai metro in the first place...

There is something about this country and might be feasible to generalize among Arabs governments: There is always more regulations than the ones really applied!!

sage & onion wrote:if the Police pull you over and you have a non family member in the car

Not necessarily "non" ...

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/06 ... 73304.html

The worst of all is when I was a victim of being fined for picking up my own wife from a bus stop in Satwa.

After reading the article i think only if the driver wants money he can be fined. If ppl share a car without payment to the driver it should be ok???

COPY:

"There are no restrictions on friends sharing a car without paying any money," he said.

He said that the department's inspectors were experienced enough to know whether passengers are using car-lift or just sharing with a friend.

TheChoosen wrote:After reading the article i think only if the driver wants money he can be fined. If ppl share a car without payment to the driver it should be ok???

COPY:

"There are no restrictions on friends sharing a car without paying any money," he said.

He said that the department's inspectors were experienced enough to know whether passengers are using car-lift or just sharing with a friend.

this is so vague.... How can they tell between if I decided to pick up someone from the road (hiking) just to help him from working as illegal taxi??????

They can still fine me about 2000+ fine just because they saw me asking someone if they want a ride or not regardless it was for money or not...

Everyone is forgetting one thing and why it is so important to get a permit from the RTA.

In the event of an accident if your insurance company deem that you are carrying passenger for "hire and reward" your insurance is invalid. Charging people for a lift to work is the same and technically turns your private car into a taxi.

The RTA are correct in trying to formalise this by way of registration.

arniegang wrote:Everyone is forgetting one thing and why it is so important to get a permit from the RTA.

In the event of an accident if your insurance company deem that you are carrying passenger for "hire and reward" your insurance is invalid. Charging people for a lift to work is the same and technically turns your private car into a taxi.

The RTA are correct in trying to formalise this by way of registration.

In Europe, and surely here in the Netherlands its common for people to carpool with eachother. They drive in turns or if thats not possible for some reason they pay eachother a monthly allowance for fuel expenditures.

The state supports its and above all, its helps the environment. Its actually promoted as energy efficient and classified as tax reductable in some provinces as I recall correctly.

Sooner or later, Dubai will has to bow towards the environment lobby groups, as this type of abundant use of resources (gasoline i.e. oil) is just not sustainable on the long run.

Give it another 5 years when oil prices are at peak once again. They'll change their stance vigorously.

arniegang wrote:Everyone is forgetting one thing and why it is so important to get a permit from the RTA.

In the event of an accident if your insurance company deem that you are carrying passenger for "hire and reward" your insurance is invalid. Charging people for a lift to work is the same and technically turns your private car into a taxi.

The RTA are correct in trying to formalise this by way of registration.

Yes indeed, the problem has been caused by so many illegal taxi's