French taxi drivers smash cars in strike against Uber

French riot police stand next to an overturned car as striking taxi drivers block traffic on the Paris ring road during a national protest against car-booking service Uber on June 25, 2015. Charles PlShow more

PARIS // French taxi drivers smashed up livery cars, set tires ablaze and blocked traffic across the country on Thursday in a nationwide strike protesting against driver-booking service Uber.

Travellers going to and from the airport walked alongside highways with their bags or got caught in ambushes, like singer Courtney Love, who said she paid two men on a motorcycle to rescue her.

“[T]hey’ve ambushed our car and are holding our driver hostage,” Love tweeted. “They’re beating the cars with metal bats. [T]his is France?? I’m safer in Baghdad.”

It was not immediately clear what type of car Love was travelling in.

Taxi drivers are angry, saying that Uber’s lowest cost service, UberPop, is taking their livelihoods away.

Despite repeated rulings against the UberPop “ridesharing” service, its drivers continue to ply French roads and Uber is actively recruiting drivers and passengers alike. The US firm claims to have a total of 400,000 customers a month in France.

Riot police chased strikers from Paris’ ring road on Thursday, where protesters torched tires in the middle of the roadway and swarmed onto exit ramps at rush hour.

France’s top security official said he had ordered an immediate ban on unlicensed services like UberPop in the Paris region but called for an end to violence against the service’s drivers.

“We are calling for calm. We are in a state of law,” interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. “A state of law is not a state of violence.”

Uber’s more expensive livery service is still legal but continues to be a source of intense frustration for French taxi drivers, who pay tens of thousands of euros to drive cars that can pick up passengers anywhere.

Taxi drivers complain that livery services like Uber – whose cars can’t be hailed on the street – unfairly undercut them and in recent weeks nearly 100 Uber drivers have been attacked, sometimes while carrying customers. One irritated taxi passenger was left with a broken face and black eye after he praised Uber.

“There are people who are willing to do anything to stop any competition,” said Thomas Meister, a spokesman for Uber. “We are only the symptom of a badly organised market.”

The French government, meanwhile, said nearly 500 legal cases have been filed across the country involving complaints about UberPop, which allows passengers to share drivers and split the cost of the journey. Several drivers have had their cars impounded. The officials reiterated concerns about safety of passengers, insisting they are not protected in case of an accident by an UberPop driver.

* Associated Press