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Hey Taxi Driver! Get Me There in One Piece
The Travel Critic · August 9, 2000

Cab stories are like fish stories. Almost everyone's got one to tell.

Here's Nora Daly's: She hailed a taxi in Chicago recently and was taken on a circuitous ride through town. "When we finally arrived, the meter read $30," recalls the Belmont, California, legal analyst. "But the driver demanded $45. When my companion paid him $35, he responded by grabbing her briefcase and throwing her to the ground. She struck the back of her head on the curb and was hospitalized for several days."

Daly called the police and had the cabbie arrested.

After one of the tires on David Huiner's cab blew at 3 a.m. in Atlanta, his driver enlisted him to help with the repair. The Marietta, Georgia, software consultant held the penlight he carries with his computer bag while the driver changed the tire.

"Trucks drove within inches of us at 75 miles an hour," he says. "Given the epidemic of fatigued drivers and the hour of the morning, we're lucky we weren't hit." The ride cost him $65 - no discount.

I once made the mistake of telling a cab driver I was in a hurry to get from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York to LaGuardia Airport. He didn't let his foot off the gas pedal until I'd arrived at the airport. I'm still recovering from the trip.

Hiring a taxi can quickly turn into a dangerous adventure these days. The casualties aren't necessarily measured by a body count - cabs are a relatively safe way to get around - but rather are assessed in nerves frazzled by close calls with other vehicles, pedestrians or the drivers.

"Why is the taxi ride becoming the most stressful part of your trip?" asks Mark Gorkin, author of "Practice Safe Stress with the Stress Doc." "It's fear. You're in a new city and you're afraid that you might get overcharged. You're afraid you might not be able to communicate with the cab driver, because he speaks another language. And he fears you, because he doesn't know what to expect."

Deborah Bernstein, a public relations manager for a hotel chain in New York, is a case in point. "I had the misfortune of getting into a taxi with a Mario Andretti wannabe," she remembers. "I told the driver to please slow down several times - to no avail."

The taxi then rear-ended another car, triggering a chain-reaction crash. Bernstein suffered minor injuries. The driver had the audacity to ask her to sign a waiver, which she didn't do.

"My mother," she adds, "has a word for that: chutzpah."

Part of the reason for the stress is that there are no uniform standards in the United States when it comes to cabs. Most of the controls are on the local level, if there are any.

New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission, which claims to be the most active taxi and limousine licensing and regulatory agency in the country, sets standards for nearly 41,000 taxi drivers (no wonder every other car seems to be yellow in Manhattan). The commission seizes about 600 vehicles a month for operating as illegal liveries and holds more than 1,500 hearings a week for violations of city and commission regulations.

And yet the Big Apple's cab drivers haven't been able to steer clear of controversy, particularly in the recent past. Last year, passengers reportedly filed 2,300 complaints against cab drivers who refused to give them a ride.

"We probably have the most comprehensive rules and regulations in the for-hire and taxi cab industry," says David Hind, the commission's chief of staff. "The overall majority are professional and conscientious, but there are still individuals that fail to abide by the rules and regulations. Eventually we catch up to them."

Terry Smythe, who moderates the online industry forum Taxi-L, offers another theory on the increasingly agonizing cab rides. He says the taxi business is a lot like the airline industry: Both were deregulated at about the same time during the 1970s, he says, with similar results -- a decline in service, the creation of virtual monopolies and, eventually, an outcry from passengers.

"The general public is saying 'whatever happened to service?'" says the Winnipeg, Canada, taxi expert. "But they'll never get it. Not like this."

Tell me about it. If Gotham, with its model regulatory agency, is suffering one cab-astrophe after another, I wonder what that says about the rest of the country? Or the rest of the world, for that matter?

Perhaps there's one universal message: If you hail a taxi, don't forget to fasten your seatbelts. You may be in for a bumpy ride.

How to handle the stress of cab rides

• Try to engage the driver in polite conversation. Terry Smythe, of Taxi-L, says most drivers appreciate a little talk as they make their rounds.
  
  
• Communicate clearly. Since English may not be a taxi driver's first language, it's critical to enunciate your instructions, "Please slow down," is better than, "Heygoslow!" The same holds with directions: the clearer, the better.
  
  
• Respect the cabby's choices. It's unwise to tell driver, "Turn off the music," since that could antagonize your driver. Ditto with a choice of directions: Unless it's a route clearly designed to ratchet up miles, which path you take to your destination is hardly worth arguing about.
  
  
• Pick your fights carefully. Some things aren't worth a confrontation; others are. For example, getting over-billed is something that's often best taken up with a regulatory agency (if there is one).

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.