MOB RULE: Rough ride for Uber as Morocco cabbies sabotage app.

As their smartphone screens lit up with ride requests last month, Uber drivers in the Moroccan city of Casablanca must have thought that business was booming.

Instead, they found themselves surrounded by irate local taxi drivers, who forced them from their vehicles and handed them over to the police, the latest in a string of protests in the kingdom against the controversial travel app.

“After the tramway, illegal drivers and now Uber, they are trying to kill us off,” said Abdelouahed, who works for a small local taxi firm.

Uber launched in Morocco’s economic hub in 2015 but was banned by local authorities after just one month.

It has recently found itself the target of increasingly brash protests organised by owners of Casablanca’s famous tomato red cabs.

“When you open Uber on your phone, you see drivers swarming around you like a virus,” said Nordine, a fifty-something driver sat on the hood of his taxi.

“And like a virus, you need radical solutions. Trap them.”

If cabs swarmed like a virus to provide immediate and inexpensive service, Uber wouldn’t be necessary. Compounding the problem, every cabbie busy harassing an Uber driver is a cabbie too busy to provide service to a passenger — creating more Uber demand.

Cabbies don’t seem to have thought this through.