How is technology changing the way businesses actually operate?

Mobility Lab

The dispatch log has four owners and none of them is responsible

SEP 202618 MIN

German law requires a private hire vehicle to return to its base after every trip unless a new order arrives before or during the ride. The duty has said the same thing since 1983; what changed is what answers it. Whether a fleet can show it complied now turns on the dispatch log, which is also the platform's optimisation tool, the regulator's file and, in one 2026 Federal Court of Justice case, the competitor's evidence. In a Bavarian licence case that year, the missing part of that record was enough to cost an operator its licence, in an interim decision under appeal. Following the log through four pairs of hands shows a process where whoever decides does not answer, whoever answers cannot watch, whoever produces the data does not file it, and whoever files it does so by hand on someone else's numbers.

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