The copycat cabs crisis

It wasn't a feeling of disappointment but rather excitement that seized taxi driver Yu Huibiao when fellow cabbie Shi Wenda didn't honk back as their cars crossed paths. When Shi didn't honk back Yu knew that he had come across Shi's copycat cab.

Forty-two-year-old Shi works for the Dazhong Taxi Company. His car plates were stolen after he parked his taxi in the residential compound where he lives in Baoshan district one night in 2010.

Suspecting that the plates were used to make a "clone" taxi - an illegal cab that looks exactly like the real thing - Shi and his friend Yu, who works for the Qiangsheng Taxi Company, agreed after that always to flash headlights and honk if they ran into each other while driving. Signals a stranger would not know about.

When Yu honked at the taxi with the same license number as Shi's on Wanhangdu Road last December and got no response, he rapidly phoned Shi and confirmed that Shi wasn't in the area. Determinedly, Yu followed the cloned taxi and finally cornered it on Changning Road.

While Shi was able to hand his cloned taxi driver over to the police, the rest of the city's taxi drivers whose cars have been cloned have not been so lucky.

In 2011 alone, 451 cloned taxis - a year-on-year increase of 140 percent - were caught by the city's traffic police. The number of cloned taxis is on the rise despite efforts to crack down on the scam.

A driver's nightmare

A cloned taxi is a nightmare for a genuine taxi driver: if the cloned taxi breaks the law it goes on the genuine driver's record and the driver can be ordered to pay fines. "Whether we like it or not, we licensed drivers end up as scapegoats," a taxi driver surnamed Fan from Chongming said. "If the clone is also responsible for fraud or other crimes more often than not we get involved in police investigations."

Cloned taxi drivers are not just a nightmare for licensed cabbies, but they can also pose a threat to their passengers. There have been cases where these drivers have driven off quickly taking luggage with them, Chen Zhaohui, a traffic police officer told the Xinhua News Agency.

There have been scores of media reports about passengers being overcharged or taken on lengthy detours. Some passengers have even been robbed by clone drivers.

Office worker Huang caught a taxi with a "Haibo" sign on it wanting to travel from Xujiahui area to Pudong International Airport last October. When she arrived and tried to pay with her transportation card, the driver pretended to swipe her card twice and then claimed the meter was broken and that she would have to pay cash.

Huang paid 182 yuan ($29) and asked for a receipt. Later she found the 800 yuan in credits which had been on her card had vanished. When she reported the case to the police and located the taxi from the number on the receipt, she was shocked to find that this was not the taxi or driver that had taken her to the airport. The clone taxi driver had switched her transportation card.

It's hard to pick a cloned taxi. They usually carry license plates, taxi lights and meters - everything a genuine taxi has.

And it doesn't cost a lot to clone a taxi. Shanghai traffic police say it costs about 30,000 yuan to turn a decommissioned cab into one that looks like a real taxi. The makeover costs include 20,000 yuan to buy a secondhand taxi on the black market, 800 yuan for fake plates and a driving license and another 2,600 yuan or so for the meter and other details.

Fines unpaid

If they are caught, cloned taxi drivers face a fine of up to 50,000 yuan and their cars are confiscated. But because it costs so little to create a cloned taxi a lot of these drivers don't pay the fines and get themselves a new clone.

Because of the huge profits it is reported that some licensed taxi drivers have resorted to having their own cabs cloned to make extra money - and they don't have to pay any of the cloned cab's takings to their taxi company.

Just 11 of the 332 cloned taxi drivers caught last year paid their fines, traffic police said. The illegal vehicles are impounded and are stored in special parking lots in Fengxian, Minhang, Baoshan and Jiading districts.

But these confiscated cars have become a financial burden for the police. It takes an average six months before a cloned taxi can be destroyed. It costs an estimated 10,000 yuan a month or more to maintain these parking lots which have been equipped with surveillance cameras, security alarms and patrolling guards.

Aware of the problem, local government authorities are considering new measures including enhancing law enforcement and collecting overdue fines. Some police forces are reportedly planning to install electronic tags on genuine taxis to make it easier to identify the clones. And police will offer a 500 yuan reward to anyone who reports a cloned taxi.

It will take more than the police to kill the clones. "We should also recognize that the fact that taxi drivers are having a difficult time making a decent income has contributed to the phenomenon of cloned taxis and we should work to improve the way taxis are regulated," Zhai Jianze, a lawyer with the National Lawyers' Association said.