“Today’s attempt to buy off taxi operators and to use backdoor methods to force safe, proven commercial vehicles off the road is wrong and highly challengeable,” said Ron Sherman, the president of the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, in a written statement. And he cited claims by his group that the smaller and lighter hybrids were less safe for passengers and drivers than the heavier Crown Victorias.

Accidents Involving Taxis Rise Sharply in New York
By Andy Newman, The New York Times
Published: February 7, 1998

Because many cabs are on the road almost constantly, it is difficult to make direct comparisons between the risk of accidents for taxis and private cars. Assemblyman Stringer has compiled a report estimating that taxis are eight times more likely than private vehicles to be involved in an accident during rush hours, based on the number of cabs and the estimated number of private cars on the city’s streets each day.

There have been several recent high-profile taxi accidents, including one last month in which a cabby who the police said was cut off by another cab swerved onto the sidewalk on Lexington Avenue and pinned a pedestrian against a light pole, severing her leg.

Some riders interviewed yesterday acknowledged feeling a certain trepidation each time they slid into the back seat.

‘’They’re nuts,’’ said Fernando Rivias, who runs a Manhattan trucking business, as he tried to get a cab at Rockefeller Plaza. ‘’I almost got killed today. The cab driver got in a fight with a truck driver, over on 57th and Madison. The cabby cut a truck off, and the truck honked. The cabby stepped on the brakes and they leaned out their windows screaming at each other.’’

[...]

Though few taxi passengers avail themselves of seat belts—a study of more than 100 riders last August by emergency room doctors at Bellevue Hospital found that virtually none wore their belts—those who might want to are likely to be frustrated. The Bellevue study, which has been submitted to the journal Emergency Medicine, found that nearly half of the yellow cabs in New York City had belts that were missing, broken or buried beneath the seat cushion.

Some of the increase in passenger injuries may have come from taxi passengers’ hitting their heads on the plastic partition between the front and back seats, which was made mandatory in most cabs beginning in 1994.

[...]

Lawyers who sue cabbies and cab companies for a living were unanimous in their opinion that cab drivers were getting worse. But many drivers and fleet owners agreed.

‘’A lot of these guys can’t drive,’’ said the owner of a fleet of about 50 cabs who spoke on condition of anonymity. ‘’We don’t even let people back out of the garage anymore.’’

[...]

Alan J. Fromberg, a taxi commission spokesman, said the agency had cracked down on bad drivers in recent years. From July to October 1997, the commission held 28,490 hearings against drivers charged with safety violations or consumer complaints, up from 20,450 during the same period in 1996 and 16,000 during the period in 1995.

But Mr. Fromberg said the agency had no immediate plans to require a road test. He said testing a driver’s ability was the province of the State Department of Motor Vehicles, which does not require an extra test for a chauffeur’s license, and that the taxi commission’s duty was only to make sure drivers passed the written test for a hack license.

‘’We don’t license people to drive,’’ said Mr. Fromberg. ‘’We license them to operate a taxicab, which is a different orientation.’’

Tags: taxis, disingenuousness, safety, new york city, michael bloomberg