Bus drivers’ unions on Friday said they are considering a class-action lawsuit over glitches in essential vehicle electronics that occurred following the nationwide adoption of digital punch clocks for buses.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications has mandated that tour buses install card readers starting this year, in an effort to prevent driver overwork and enhance road safety.
However, a coalition of bus drivers’ unions said that in the six months since the policy took effect, there have been multiple reports of the devices interfering with vehicles’ electronic systems, leading to various malfunctions.
Photo: CNA
The Highway Bureau said it confirmed that 20 buses were malfunctioning, and a probe has been launched to explain the glitches and fix the vehicles.
New Taipei City Touring-bus Craft Union for the Drivers Hsu president Ching-hsiang (許景翔) said the punch clocks were designed to function in conjunction with the vehicles’ GPS, but multiple drivers said that the clocks’ software seemed to be incompatible with the buses’ navigation and control software.
Checks showed that manually disconnecting the punch clock stopped the dashboard from displaying error messages, and plugging it back in caused them to reappear, Hsu said.
These problems could cost bus drivers money, he said, adding that complaints about glitches have continued, suggesting that the issues were not isolated incidents.
The government had ordered the clocks to be installed on all 13,000 buses driving on the road, and not fixing the glitches would impact the trade as a whole, Hsu said.
A bureau spokesperson said the unions did not submit their complaints through official channels, but government personnel did receive incident reports, which have been verified.
Officials are investigating the cause of the system errors, they said, without addressing the bus drivers’ demands for compensation.
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