Vicky Cheng

Hello everyone, I am Vicky, Public Policy Manager for Asia Pacific at Uber. You can probably hear that I'm not from Taiwan...

I just got off the plane and came straight here. I hope today I can share and exchange with you our concepts regarding the sharing economy, and our company's commitment in this regard.

Other countries have seen such regulations emerge for Uber. For example, in the United States, our US business operations began in 2009, with 54 regions having carpooling regulations. In Asia, the Philippines also did this in May, as you have discussed.

We understand that some places walk at the forefront of innovation while some are more conservative, but if the government maintains a relatively open attitude, there will be relatively open breakthroughs. We hope to communicate and cooperate with the same attitude in many countries to reach our goals.

Just now we might have also mentioned the part about Singapore. Our services there are actually developing very well. Locally, the threshold for commercial vehicles is very high, whereas in Singapore it is very easy to obtain commercial vehicle plates. Our business is doing very well there too, and they are also relaxing regulations regarding apps. We hope carpooling apps will see some development after communication.

So from our experience communicating with other places, proposals must be brought forward around two main themes: new regulations and new passenger safety. Under the overarching premise of the sharing economy, we hope to use such main principles. We understand that various places have different characteristics, and ultimately I believe the MOTC and the government hope to give passengers a safe way to travel.

Finally, what we want to talk about is safety. In every group on pol.is, we saw that safety receives the most attention.

The vast majority of passengers who have ridden with Uber trust safety very much. We can also see this situation from pol.is data.

Before the trip, we require drivers to have police clearance certificates and no traffic accident records. The app also has GPS tracking and insurance as required by law.

We demand safety guarantees during the trip, as well as after the trip, providing an additional NT$20 million protection for passengers and third parties.

Therefore, looking at how to cooperate with the government: we hope to establish unified standards with the government. After elevating carpooling standards, government databases can be utilized to coordinate and ensure safety.

We have 50 colleagues in the United States looking at how to use such technology to put safety features into the app.

So finally, this is our company's commitment. Right now we operate in over 300 cities, with over 1 million trips every day. Safety is the most important consideration for us.