Must now wear a mask when taking a taxi in Busan

The city of Busan will temporarily allow taxi drivers to refuse passengers without masks until the end of March to prevent the spread of coronavirus to the community and to ease the anxiety of transportation workers.

The taxi industry sterilizes vehicles every day and makes every effort to prevent infection from passengers, such as mandating transportation workers to wear masks and providing hand sanitizers in vehicles.

While the majority of customers have been wearing masks, the safety of the drivers has been in question.

As the average age of most taxi drivers is in their 50s and 60s, issues of their health safety have become a major concern for the drivers.

Due to the nature of taxis, drivers are highly susceptible to infections as they work relatively long hours, making it very likely to be a super propagator to transport infectious diseases between regions as well as the workers work face to face with passengers in a small, confined space of about 2.6㎡.

For this reason, the Busan Taxi Association officially proposed to the city to allow them to deny taxi fares for customers without masks for the health of transportation workers and the safety of post-passenger passengers.

The city agreed to temporarily permit them to refuse passengers who want to use a taxi without wearing a mask.

According to Article 10 of the current Busan Metropolitan City Taxi Transportation Business Conditions of Carriage, if a passenger using a taxi fails to comply with a request for the safety of passengers or maintaining order in the car, the transport operator may refuse the transportation.

An official from Busan City said, “Allowing passengers to refuse to wear masks was an inevitable option for the safety of taxi passengers and transportation workers. This means that both passengers and drivers will participate in preventing the spread of COVID-19 and creating a social atmosphere wearing masks.”

The ordinance will be in effect until March 31.