Taking You For A Ride

Out here on the West Coast we have an interesting new type of taxi service. Ordinary people seeking additional income sign up with a ride-sharing business and use their own car to provide cab rides. Riders sit in the front seat and get to choose what music, if any, is played during the trip. Best of all, the owners attach a huge pink mustache to their car’s front grill to identify themselves to customers.

But in Seattle the cab industry is crying foul. Among their complaints is the claim that this new service is potentially dangerous because, unlike professional cabbies, the drivers aren’t licensed and monitored by the city.

I’m sure this has nothing to do with preventing unwanted competition, since passenger safety is the top concern to the existing cab industry. A simple look at my latest cab trip through San Francisco proves this:

I wave down a cab and load into the front seat. The driver grunts and then tells me I need to ride in the back. I get out and enter the back of the car. A second after my door is closed the cabbie bolts across three lanes of traffic and grinds to a halt at a light. We sit in the right lane with the cabbie tapping the wheel impatiently. The car in front of us is not turning right-on-red for whatever reason. Perhaps the driver doesn’t know you can do this. Or maybe he doesn’t want to get tagged by the cars racing past his hood.

My driver exhales and lays into the horn. He holds it until the car in front of us turns.

We turn behind our adversary, jut into the center lane, and scream past him. I hold off asking my cab driver if he wants me to flip the guy off. I’m too busy bracing myself with both hands on the seat in front of me and staring through the windshield. Bad techo-dance music courses from the stereo as the guy speeds up to make it through a yellow light. He drives like he’s fleeing a car bombing in his country of origin.

So much for checking out the neighborhoods we pass through. You can’t really see much at this speed.

We roar up to another light as a bicyclist drifts across the road, aiming for the lane we’re travelling in. I crush the seat with my hands, getting ready to yell something. My driver gets to within thirty feet of the bicyclist and hits the brakes. Then he lays on the horn.

The bicyclist is not wearing a helmet. Perhaps my driver is using the horn to tell him that that’s just not safe.

Ten minutes after being picked up I arrive at my destination with Post Traumatic Cab Disorder. I pay up and exit the car. All this fun only cost me twenty bucks. It’s now time to find somewhere to purchase new underwear.

I don’t know why anyone would seek out an alternative to the professionals.