Taxi Driver Online

Teething problems ? ha ha, Inverclyde Taxis has had autocab omega in for nearly 2 years now and are still experiencing problems on a daily basis with this fraud of a system. Inverclyde Taxis has requested an engineer be based in Greenock in order to cope with the problems...

what I can't get my head around is that drivers have to press the status button every time they want to see what position they are on a rank !!!!! auriga system updated and refreshed every 15 seconds thus showing the driver an accurate rank position

drivers who are checking their position using the status button have experienced the inability to accept a job whilst the datahead is processing their status rank position.. the system appears to be incapable of performing several tasks at the one time its shocking

Why do they need to keep seeing their position on the rank? You see the position as it logs you onto the rank and gives you a job when you reach no. 1.

As far as I can see, the system is working as designed..........

I was thinking that.....and whats the chances of getting a job whilst checking your status, although I've never heard of that problem.

CC

cant beat the old voice system imo
i miss the banter to.
tbh i can see very little advantage of data units

So you would just be happy sitting there with no indicator of how long you are going to wait on a job ? not everyone sits on a rank, but sit somewhere else waiting for radio work... so i want to know exactly where i stand with regards to my position

This system has also has history of giving out a job to the 2nd car on the rank before the first car, and i know that because i has happened to me. Another driver and myself were sitting at a rank for 45mins 1st and 2nd on the system respectively and i received a job before him, it has happened a couple of times to me. So in that scenario the driver who has been ' by-passed ' has cause to complain because he knew he was 1st car....

The system is a piece of [edited by admin] and how it is passed off as state-of-the-art is laughable.

If a person is sitting there waiting for a job its hardly the auto-cabs system the phone isn't ringing.....and if it isn't ringing then it doesn't matter what position in the area you are.

In respect of this what are the chances of a job being dispatched at the very moment you check your status?

I can find what position I am using the plot info button.....which tells me how many cars are in the zone.

As for getting bypassed, there are numerous reasons.....these include bent office staff and certain vehicles being wanted by the customer......although I suppose that's auto-cabs fault as well?

CC

You can see the jobs coming up in 15 & 30 minutes.

If the 2nd car gets the job it could be because the GPS plotted him to a zone before the other car. eg, cars approaching a rank from different directions will log into the zone at different times. If car 2 has a shorter distance to run, he will be physically no. 1 but no. 2 on the system.

He may also benefit in that the first job out could be going round the corner and the second job will be the £50 job; He won't complain about his position on the rank then, will he?

The system, when used properly, is excellent. Don't forget your 'soon to clear' button. That advances you to the zone ahead of cars in other zones.

Drivers need to change their mindset and think logically about the way the system works then, they will get tremedous benefits from the additional workload the office can deal with.

I agree with most of what you wrote....apart from the bit I quoted above.

The office need staff that can answer phones.....but maybe phones that actually ring too

CC

Very true. But staff also need to be able to answer phones without drivers on the radio continually bitching about who got the best job and when. In many instances this will need an acceptance of the system's ability to cope.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong but isn’t Inverclyd saying is that they can’t see their position in the queue without having to press buttons? If that’s the case then it’s a pretty poor show as every data unit I’ve come across has that permanently displayed and updated either real time or at least every 20 seconds or so.

Another ‘maybe’ is that displaying the info is some kind of option that just isn’t enabled? I can understand the rational for withholding certain information but for the life of me, I can’t think up any good reason to withhold a drivers turn indicator?

I think what he's saying is the datahead cannot accept a job whist the user is accessing information?

CC

Firstly, who mentioned anything about phones not ringing being autocabs fault in regards to your position ? The chances of being given a job when you are checking your status has happened to me twice and both times i have been unable to accept the job. Had I known my position i wouldn't have had to do a status check.

Take sitting at a rank out of the equation because not all drivers sit on official ranks in any given zone but are still on the system waiting on radio work.

Bill appears to know what i am talking about because our old Auriga system displayed your current position on the datahead which updated every 15-20 seconds allowing the drivers to be aware of exactly where they stand in the queue.

Regarding 2nd car on the system getting a radio job before the car thas 1st. Cabbyman mentioned about GPS plotting the car that entered the zone first being in front for radio work, well thats where the problem lies. I came into the zone after my friend hence his datahead was showing him 1st car on the system, whilst waiting on jobs my datahead gave me a job 2nd car whilst he sat there still 1st car and got nothing. Another point to mention is that our system has IVR which allows customers to press 1 on their landline telephone and order a taxi to that address without speaking to office staff, that was the case in that scenario so that would rule out any office workers punting work etc

The ' soon to clear button ' was on Auriga systems 20 years ago so thats hardly a new thing either.

There is no need for drivers to change mindsets. Despatching taxi jobs is a simple task. Problem here is that the AutoCab Omega is oversimplified and doesn't have the ability to perform the essential basic tasks efficiently. Logging on to it takes about on average 3 attempts to complete, you regurlarly drive through zones without autoplotting onto it. The system takes 90 seconds to update / refresh unlike as mentioned above, Auriga's done it in 15-20 seconds

Inverclyde Taxis also operates the taxis at Glasgow Airport and there was uproar when that system was put in, drivers held demonstrations and allsorts. I would imagine there would be some information about it on this forum. Glasgow airport ordered that GPS be fitted to all cars that serviced the airport after an incident a few years back. Drivers are simply covering the external GPS with crisp or cigarrette packets to jam the signal, or better still sticking it under their leg. This system is heralded as state-of-the-art yet it has an external GPS !! and a crisp packet can defy its very existence ?

The system is far from excellent as mentioned because as far as we are concerned in Inverclyde Taxis the system cannot be taken seriously and until it can comfortably carry out essential basic tasks in an efficient manner, we long the day they revert back to Auriga....

I don’t have any direct experience of this particular system but it might help if I tried to clarify some of the general issues raised.

Missing a job through checking your position.
This really shouldn’t happen. All systems to my knowledge attempt several job retries before declaring a car out of contact and the overall process can take up to 1 minute to do this. In any case, incoming jobs offers are generally treated as the highest priority and usually override lower order functions on the data terminal.

Second car getting the job.
This can easily happen but unless you’re aware of all the circumstances and the auto-dispatch rules it’s impossible to say. There’s an example showing just this on this work in progress web page.How Auto get's it wrong? The point is that auto dispatch takes all these factors into consideration in a fraction of a second and so to the casual observer it may appear to get it completely wrong.

IVR prevents this
Almost but not necessarily, because if an IVR customer requested the job was for five people and you were a standard saloon, then your friend with a five-seater would get the job over you.

Logging on / Auto-plotting
Again not too certain of this but I believe the Autocab system won’t let you on without valid GPS data and all GPS units do take a wile to come up valid depending on how long they’ve been off for. We get round this by allowing 2 manual (none GPS) plots before auto plotting takes over.

As for completely missing an area, this can happen especially if the area is small. I suspect Autocab do the same as us by not changing the area until a set number of consecutive area readings have been taken. Without this, a car would be bouncing around all the area borders especially if not much care has been taken when mapping out the auto plot data.

Cheating the GPS
Well you can’t really stop this but at least it’s easy to identify anyone attempting it and flag up a warning. The systems have to allow for a none-working GPS unit or the occasional loss of satellites but other than that it’s down to how the company deals with cheating.