Thursday, March 24, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Surveillance cameras installed in cabs

Despite rule delay, devices put in to deter crime, monitor driver habits

Joey Fiore, a serviceman with Whittlesea Bell Transportation, downloads data from a video camera inside a cab Wednesday. The company views downloaded images only after a traffic incident or crime. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Whittlesea Bell Transportation President Brent Bell views video images downloaded from a camera inside a cab Wednesday. The company's nearly 400 cabs all will have such surveillance by the end of next week. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

A rule mandating surveillance cameras in cabs won't go into effect April 1, as once planned. But many Las Vegas Valley taxi passengers can still expect to have their images recorded.

In fact, two of every five cabs in Southern Nevada will be camera-equipped by the end of April, as the valley's two largest cab companies are voluntarily installing such devices.

"In one month, 40 percent of cabdrivers in town will be protected by cameras," said Bill Shranko, operations director of Yellow-Checker-Star Transportation, the valley's largest cab company with more than 500 taxis.

Leading the way is Shranko's largest rival, Whittlesea Bell Transportation. It's already outfitted almost 300 cabs with cameras and microphones, and expects to have 100 or so remaining cabs done by the end of next week.

"I was putting this in, with or without a mandate," said Brent Bell, Whittlesea's president. "I made a commitment to the Taxicab Authority. We plan on keeping our word."

That's mostly good news to unionized cabbies, who long have sought cameras as a crime deterrent but who also have been wary about such devices being used to monitor driver work habits.

"All these cab companies at first resisted the idea. Some have come around," said Craig Harris, a steward with the Industrial Technical Professional Employees Union, the valley's largest representative of cabbies. "I have nothing but praise for those who are going forward."

Last year, the Taxicab Authority passed a rule requiring cameras in all valley cabs by the end of next week. But that rule was put on hold by state legislators after the American Civil Liberties Union complained about allowances for audio surveillance.

It's now unclear when or even if the rule will take effect.

The rule set minimum standards for cameras, requiring an image be recorded every few seconds when a door is opened or closed or when an alarm is triggered. While Shranko's taxis meet that standard, Bell's cameras far exceed that bar.

Whittlesea's cameras have microphones and continually monitor what's going on inside a cab, but only save data in a 20-second window when doors are opened or closed; when sensors find erratic driving, such as a sudden stop, a sharp turn or a hard jolt; or when drivers manually activate recorders in an emergency.

Bell's cameras monitor both the cabin area and the road ahead.

Bell unabashedly admits to using cameras as not just a driver safeguard but as a management tool to find out what drivers did wrong, and why.

"If the cameras help me weed out the 5 percent of the bad apples, then it's a benefit to my company, it's a benefit to my good drivers, and it's a benefit to the traveling public," Bell said.

And the bad apples have shown themselves. Recordings triggered by bad driving have helped Bell learn of an unreported cab accident; a driver racing passing traffic, and even a driver offering unsolicited free rides to a strip club after a too-tight turn.

In one case, a driver was heard cursing at the driver of another car before backing into that car. When a recorder is triggered, it saves 10 seconds of audio and video on either side of the triggering incident.

"If I don't have the audio, he could have said, `Geez, I just backed into the guy. It was an accident,' " Bell said.

Harris said his union prefers cameras without audio, but they'll take whatever system they can get as an investigative tool for police. Of 17 cabdriver killings since 1971 in Southern Nevada, 13 remain unsolved.

"If the primary premise is for driver safety, and that's the primary premise and the legislative intent of the Taxicab Authority board, that's what we're going for," Harris said.

"I have heard concerns of drivers about audio. I'm not sure if it's more of a perception of Big Brother is watching versus the reality," Harris said. "Are you going to have more people to download every single cab for two shifts a day? No. If there's a reason to do so? Yes."

The practical considerations in downloading thousands of hours of information from hundreds of cabs is a hedge against intrusions of passenger privacy, except in accidents and crimes, backers claim.

Said Harris: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless you rob a cabdriver or assault him."

Whether riders will accept audio recording in the long run has yet to be seen.

"The public acceptance of things like this is a little slower than the technology that's already here," Harris said.

Bell believes public acceptance won't be a problem. He estimates his camera cabs have made about 1 million trips since August without a complaint. And studies commissioned by the Taxicab Authority found overwhelming passenger indifference.

"The riding public is clearly not concerned about the cameras," said Richard Land, the authority's chairman.

Agreed, said Michael Jones, a driver for Whittlesea subsidiary Henderson Taxi. "I've had no complaints about the cameras, the video, the audio, anything," he said. "When the camera comes up, 60 (percent) to 70 percent of people say it's a great thing."

Besides, cameras already inundate our society, Bell said. "That's the way it is," he said. "You walk into a convenience store, you walk into a 7-Eleven, you walk into a bank, you can't walk in without being on camera."

Bell paid more than $400,000 for the cameras and soon will start paying drivers $200 monthly bonuses if they go 30 days without triggering cameras due to an unjustified incident.

Bell believes the cameras and bonuses will pay for themselves by spurring operational efficiencies.

"I can either pay a driver $200 a month for driving safely, or I can put that $200 a month into shocks and struts" damaged by hard driving, Bell said.

Smaller companies have been moving more slowly toward camera-equipping their fleets, amid wariness of what regulators eventually will demand. "I'm all ready to put cameras in, but I don't know what to put in," said Herb Tobman, owner of Western Cab.

Bell doesn't believe other companies have any good excuses.

"They think the Legislature is going to bail them out" by rejecting the rule permanently, Bell said. "They're waiting. They're hoping."

Harris believes smaller firms eventually will follow the lead of their bigger brethren.

"If the deterrent effect is there -- and it's been shown in other cities -- they'll come around," he said.