Zero progress on emergency contacts file
Nothing has changed since 5 year old girl went missing
Toronto received a gift last March, in the form of a dumb lucky near-miss. A five-year-old girl went missing in an Uber, and when the girls’ mother and Toronto Police contacted Uber to track down the driver, Uber refused to disclose the driver’s cell phone number, citing privacy considerations.
Toronto Police put out an all-points bulletin, providing a visual description of the missing Uber vehicle, and miraculously, cops on the street located the van in the west end within about an hour.
Never mind Digital Identification, Global Positioning Systems, Artificial Intelligence, or any of the other latest, greatest, leading-edge technologies which could have and should have been available to police scrambling to find a missing girl in an Uber van. At least 68 police cars, driven by human police officers, using the eyes God gave them, found the van that went missing in March, 2025. They used exactly the same technology that would have been available to them in March, 1925. Police officers, and their eyes.
The mother of the missing girl, Dr. Julia Viscomi, was so distraught at Uber’s refusal to release the driver’s cell phone number to police that she has launched a lawsuit against the corporation which is underway now.
Councillor Mike Colle was so outraged at Uber’s refusal to release the driver’s cell phone number to police that he quickly drafted a motion for City Council, demanding all Vehicle for Hire companies (this would include Taxis as well as rideshare) be compelled to provide Emergency Contact information to Police, as well as City staff. His motion directed staff to conduct a consultation with industry members on how this should best be done.
The motion presented no challenge or threat at all to Toronto’s licensed Taxi brokerages, which have live telephone dispatchers 24 hours per day and which have been required to provide the City with emergency contact information for decades.
For Uber, Lyft, HOVR, Hopp and other ride-hailing companies which operate through an app with no live dispatchers or 24-hour staff at all, it’s a much bigger deal.
Dr. Viscomi’s daughter went missing in March. Colle’s motion passed unanimously in April. It’s been a long spring/summer since the motion passed; six months later, industry members expecting to be invited to the consultation have not heard a word from anyone. There appears to be absolutely ZERO progress on creating a regulation requiring firms to provide Emergency Contact information to the City and Police.
Last April, Dr. Viscomi told Taxi News that the hour her daughter was missing while police searched for her was “the longest hour of my life.”
SIX MONTHS LATER, the very same thing could easily happen again – only next time, the story might not have such a happy ending. Everyone – Toronto, the Police, Uber, Dr. Viscomi and her daughter – caught a lucky break when it appeared the Uber driver had just made a mistake and pulled away in the confusion of a drop-off involving lots of kids. In fact, the movie “Home Alone” became a blockbuster hit having been based on exactly the same premise: parents losing track of one of a large number of kids. It happens. It happened.
What is not excusable, however, is the fact that Toronto and the Police have known since at least March of 2025 that the lack of an Emergency Contact requirement for ground transportation firms is a glaring, yawning gap in the system that puts riders at risk; and they have done nothing to fix it.
Six months later.
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Has a black market in rideshare and delivery accounts and IDs interfered with the ability of regulators and police to determine exactly who is behind the wheel any given vehicle for hire? Taxi News is currently researching this disturbing phenomenon. If you have background or personal experience on “leased” Uber accounts or other similar situations, please contact me confidentially at ritasmith@taxinews.com
