The editorial team knows the name of a driver who has been driving a taxi on the Bolt platform for years, and he told ERR that he works more than 300 hours a month on the platform. The screenshots he shared confirm this, showing that his total hours worked in three months exceed 900. Driving less than 50 hours a week, he says, does not make sense because it is not economically viable.

"Four to five years ago, the service was normal, and Bolt gave lots of bonuses. Because I had a lot of time, I could fill them, sometimes the bonuses even covered my commission. If you made 100 trips a week, you would get a bonus of €70 euros," said the taxi driver.

"There were all kinds of bonuses, like if you made five trips to take people to the airport between six and eight in the morning rush hour, you got yet another bonus."

Now there are no more bonuses because there are so many drivers from other countries, he said.

The taxi driver's reason for working so many hours was that, as a retiree, he still got up in the morning and went straight to work.

But he is far from the Bolt driver with the most hours: he estimates that refugees drive even more.

However, the cost is high because you have to rent a car, which costs €150-200 per week. For the price of a rental car, the oil and tires are also changed, and if you have an accident, you can get another car immediately, he explained. In addition to the rental fee, the driver also has to pay Bolt a commission of 25 percent of the service.

"It used to be 20 percent all the time, but about six months ago it was raised to 25 percent. January and February were bad, then the prices came down, but the 25 percent did not come down. That's also why we have to drive that much," he said.

The driver receives a bonus for displaying Bolt stickers on the door of the car, and the amount increases with the number of hours worked per month: for example, a monthly amount of €135 for 300 trips, but €280 for 515 trips. However, since the cars are usually rented, it is common for the amount to be halved between the rental company and the taxi driver.

The biggest concern, he said, is that while he pays his taxes honestly through a business account, there is a lot of fraud in the field, both in terms of tax evasion and other things. For example, there are taxi companies that do not inform immigrant taxi drivers, who are less familiar with the situation, about the bonus money they receive for displaying a Bolt sticker and take all the money.

Bolt does not directly intervene in the regulation of drivers' working time

According to police, driving while fatigued is similar to driving while intoxicated because people become less responsive and more distracted.

However, Bolt does not directly intervene in the regulation of working hours of express taxi drivers. The company's head of driving services, Oscar Rõõm, said that drivers working on Bolt's platform are independent service providers who decide when and for how long they will be on the platform.

"However, we are aware of the risks of driving for long periods at a time, and our system automatically sends alerts to drivers when they have been behind the wheel for a long time. These alerts are designed to encourage drivers to take breaks," Rõõm said.

In his view, recent price changes have shown that drivers are earning more in less time as demand increases.

"The statistics for April show that the vast majority of drivers are active on our platform for less than eight hours a day, with around 50 percent active for less than four hours a day. A few percent of drivers are active on the platform for more than 10 hours a day, and they also get our recommendations for breaks," Rõõm said.

In addition, he said that some of the driving hours recorded do not necessarily represent active driving time, but also include rest periods such as waiting for orders or refueling the vehicle.

"Ten hours of continuous driving is extremely rare, according to our data," Rõõm said.

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