According to the testimony of a victim, a taxi driver from San José thought he was an Uber driver and tried to attack him, the victim who turned out to be a bodyguard, took out his gun to defend himself.

This situation occurred some days back, apparently the taxi driver started following him, the bodyguard noticed the situation and parked his car, at which point the cab driver got out of his car with a machete threatening him and walking towards the victim’s car, who pulled out his regulation gun and got the cab driver to back away.

Earlier this month Uber drivers in Costa Rica complained that they were being “hunted” by red cabs, there was even a campaign circulating in social media urging the help of the citizenship to set a trap to Uber drivers by requesting their services and then asking them to stop at designed areas where the traffic police is situated, this in order to get them fined. Taxi drivers denied their involvement in such campaign.

Violence in the streets between red official cabs and Uber drivers was reactivated since the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) affirmed that the only legal public transportation service of this type is the regular taxi service.

Another case was reported back in February 23 when a car stopped in Paseo Colón to pick up a woman with two kids, at that moment several red cabs blocked in the car, luckily police officers were close by and acted immediately, there was no confirmation that it was actually an Uber driver.

Other campaigns in social media request users of the app to protect the drivers by traveling in the front seat and denying that it is an Uber service if they get stopped by traffic officers, some users take this seriously, an Uber driver and his client gave their testimony to a local news outlet explaining that they have to lie saying they were lovers in order to avoid problems when they got stopped near La Sabana. The fine to offer this service is of Ȼ103.000,00 colones (around $200.00 USD).

Taxi drivers consider Uber is affecting their livelihood, according to different statistics their business has gone down by at least 35% as many users prefer using Uber.