SYRACUSE, N.Y. - A Syracuse taxi driver is making it a personal mission to unmask what he says is a dangerous and fraudulent scam afflicting the riding public.
Chris O'Connell, owner of Syracuse New York Taxi, has spent the last several months snapping photos of Uber and Lyft vehicles, doing his part to build a database that purports to tell passengers whether their Uber or Lyft drivers are uninsured.
There's one problem, though: The database's claims are false.
O'Connell has taken photos of at least 85 photos of Uber and Lyft drivers' license plates here. That sometimes leads to confrontations with ride-booking drivers and, as a result, has widened the rift between the cabbie old guard and the newfangled tech service.
O'Connell is taking the photos -- and collecting as much other information as possible -- for RideSafeWorld.com, a site operated out of Wisconsin where he is named as one of four volunteer staff members. He's listed as the operation's northeast region administrator and the chief of public relations for the Eastern United States.
When a user enters a license plate number that matches one of the about 2.500 plates in the database, an image of a skull and cross bones pops up.
"UNINSURED/UNSAFE VEHICLE! DO NOT USE!" the website warns.
"If the vehicle is not safe, we advise that you do not approach or enter the vehicle!" the website cautions.
New York state and Uber officials said the database can't be accurate because it does not have access to insurance records for the vehicles.
Two websites that the database's operator claim to rely on both confirmed to Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard that they do not provide insurance information.
Falsely claiming a rider is uninsured and a danger is potentially harmful to the tens of thousands of Uber drivers in Upstate New York, state and Uber officials said.
Justin La Plante, the Wisconsin-based engineer and former taxi driver who runs the RideSafeWorld website, acknowledged that the database is inaccurate.
He said the claim to verify insurance based on a provided license plate number is a way to make the point that, in his opinion, all Uber drivers are not insured at the level he thinks is safe.
La Plante said he believes Uber drivers are putting the public at risk because their vehicles are not insured as commercial vehicles.
In New York state, drivers for ride-booking apps actually are insured automatically the moment they open the app and accept a ride request.
The level of coverage was one of the primary legislative sticking points that made Upstate New York one of the last regions in the country to have access to the apps.
When a passenger is in the vehicle, they are insured up to $1.25 million with deductibles of $1,000. Drivers also cannot use the apps unless they already have their own insurance, even if it is not what covers them when they're driving for Uber or Lyft.
La Plante, a former Wisconsin cab driver, said he started the website because he was incensed about what he sees as a fraudulent and dangerous new industry.
Chris O'Connell, a Syracuse taxi driver and operator of RideSafeWorld.com, posted this image to Facebook, where a rift between taxi drivers and ride-booking app drivers has spilled into view. TNC stands for "transportation network company," a term for Uber and Lyft.
La Plante claimed the database works like this: Driver's licenses are submitted by people like O'Connell, and he begins to do a records search to determine whether the person is insured or has a criminal history.
La Plante said criminal checks entail a review of public records.
For the insurance check, La Plante said he enters the license plate number into RecordsFinder.com to get information about the vehicle's owner, and he requests a CarFax report to determine whether the driver has insurance.
However, representatives from both RecordsFinder.com and CarFax said they don't provide that information.
Also, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Motor Vehicles said the only way to determine whether a driver has insurance based on his or her license plate number is through a Freedom of Information Law request, which can take months.
"Either way, we checked, and we haven't received any FOILs like this," DMV spokeswoman Tiffany Portzer said.
Finally, an Uber spokeswoman said she was able to verify that one of the license plates from a Syracuse Uber driver deemed as "uninsured" by the website was fully insured.
O'Connell said he feels he has been forced to step in due to what he sees as the state's failure to regulate the burgeoning industry. He estimated that night-time taxi drivers here have lost half of their business in Syracuse to a fleet of "uninsured," potentially dangerous drivers.
"We're just trying to do our part to make it safer. It doesn't seem like our government is doing it for us," he said.
O'Connell also takes issue with the background checks for Uber and Lyft drivers, which he said are less rigorous than those for cabbies. O'Connell pointed to a local case of an Uber driver accused of sexually assaulting a passenger.
In that case, however, the driver went on to work for a taxi company, where he is accused of assaulting a second passenger.
Some local ride-booking drivers said they are increasingly concerned at the behavior of O'Connell and other taxi drivers, describing confrontations between the two groups of drivers since the apps launched here and the rest of Upstate New York six months ago.
Tensions immediately arose in June between the app drivers and taxi drivers, especially in high-traffic areas like downtown and the Lakeview Amphitheater. Uber drivers would sometimes see taxi drivers waving their middle fingers at them while they dropped off passengers, according to Uber drivers' comments on local Facebook groups.
But O'Connell's activity has escalated the feud, drivers said. On a private Facebook group, two other Uber and Lyft drivers described confronting O'Connell as he tried to photograph their vehicles. And drivers from both sides are confronting each other on social media.
O'Connell also described another encounter with an Uber driver on Jan. 1 who was selling his car while driving for the app.
"He stormed back to his car and decided to follow me but thought better of it after a few blocks," O'Connell wrote on the website.
Two weeks ago, O'Connell described an almost-fight that occurred a few weeks ago with an Uber driver in a minivan in the Hawley Green neighborhood.
"The guy asked me why I was taking his picture. I said, 'You drive for Uber and Lyft,'" O'Connell told Syracuse.com. "As soon as I said that, it turned into, he thinks he wants to start a fight over it. I made it very clear you don't want to do that. I've been a taxi driver for 20 years. I know how to defend myself."
Uber drivers who reported confrontations with O'Connell did not respond to a request for comment.
The administrator of the private Facebook group for Uber and Lyft drivers said there has been a battle on Facebook, with Uber drivers leaving nasty reviews on O'Connell's business Facebook page. O'Connell has since shut down the review section.
"Our guys are not innocent in this either," administrator Jason Landry said. "They're going online and saying, 'leave a bad review on his page,' or whatever. I've had to remove a lot of cussing."