So, I live in downtown Montreal, where taking a cab is almost a daily process for me. There are cab stands all over the place, and generally there are just tons of cabs everywhere.

A couple weeks ago, two of my friends and I decided to take a cab to the casino (15 minute cab ride). We grabbed one from the cab stand across the street from my house (I take cabs from this stand a few times a week, at least), with me getting stuck with the "bitch" seat this time.

About 5 minutes into the cab ride, the driver randomly stomps on the gas pedal and speeds down this large hill. Then he kinda diverts from the lane and barrels towards a parked car and smashes into the side of the car, scraping up the parked car and taking off his own side mirror. He turns around at me and has this weird maniacal grin on his face and says "Ca coute l'argent!" (which afaik means "that costs money") and keeps driving down the hill, towards the highway that we're about to be taking to the casino. (So there's like 10 minutes left in the cab ride, but we're in a spot where we can't really get out of the cab) He takes the highway and seems to have his **** together (as my friends and I are kind of just sitting there in shock), then approaches the casino and randomly starts tapping the brakes and slightly swerving but finally gets us there. There's no sidewalk on this part of the road, so getting out isn't an option, and we're just kinda hoping he stops ****ing around before something (else) bad happens.

We get to the casino and pay him the fare, and he gets in line for a different cab stand to take people from the casino back into town.

I'm really concerned because I've recently heard people talking about how they've seen some cab drivers drinking out of the trunks of their cars before taking people on their rides.


This ****s me up because I figure if instead of scraping up the parked car, he crashed directly into it, I'd probably have flown through the windshield of his cab and died, because he was probably going ~45-50 mph (the cab didn't have a seatbelt for the middle seat, and who uses seatbelts in cabs anyhow, and the shotgun seat was occupied by random cab driver ****). It also means there are people being transported by drunk/reckless/insane cab drivers all over the city and someone's bound to get hurt/die at some point.

I didn't get his plates or anything, but should I keep an eye out for these people and report them somewhere? Is there legal recourse for being in a cab that gets smashed up?

I didn't smell alcohol in that cab, but I'm still concerned. Should we have just yelled "STOP THE CAB" and gotten out without paying?


Anyhow, interested to see what people's perspectives are, I find that this is a major concern.





cliff notes:
-took cab
-cab sideswiped parked car + took off side mirror
-continued cab ride
-paid fare and left
-concerned



in b4 "kool?"

Taking down his plates and company after you get out would be good, and if there is taxi driver information in the car posted that you can take down without alerting him, I would do that. Cell phones are great for this. Glad you're alright, that's infinitely more important than warning others about him. If you do have the information, than call the company and let them know.

I probably tip him extra for lightning fast arrival

I'm scared for my life in cabs about half the time anyway...

Dangerous Cab Driver?



HIYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Cabbies drive ****ing insane, it's one of the rules. If the suck enough to actually hit somebody and cause some damage and then drive off, yeah- you should probably do something.

So you got there fast and did not get hurt?

I'm missing the problem I guess

I had a friend who would always yell "no cops, no stops" as soon as we got in a cab on the way from the pre drink to the bar in Toronto. Cabbies normally ignored him or joked around or something. Then one night after he yells it the cabby turns around and absolutely screams at us "OK NO COPS NO STOPS" in a think eastern European accent. He proceeds to run every single red light and stop sign on the way to the bar, we almost got T-Boned like 4 times, we were all essentially begging him to stop the entire time, when we got to the bar I threw some money at him and we ran, most terrifying experience of my life.

You're serious?

Are you the kind of person that doesn't mind getting a ride from a friend who is drunk?

What other lines of work exist where the professionals are almost always worse at their jobs than amateurs?

Take down the license number which will be in plain sight, not the car plates. He likely shares the cab with everyone else at the company and if he doesnt give a **** about ****ing it up they likely dont keep great records on who had it and when.

I wouldn't really call cab drivers "professionals."

I really can't believe someone would let a cab hit another car and not contact the cab company / police with the drivers license number.

If you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem.

I'm useally the drunk friend driving home?

Getting a ride from a drunk friend >>> driving drunk yourself.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Even getting a ride from a drunk friend is a huge mistake imo.

I just can't believe you PAID. I would have just walked out and say "do you really want me to pay, because if you want me to pay, I'm making a phone call"

then I probably make the phone call anyways, you did terrible here.

But they are! They drive cars for a living. But they're worse at it than the rest of us.

Well tbh, I think I was kind of just happy we got there without getting hurt. I think the rationale (or lack thereof) for not calling the cops or whatever was because we had been drinking a bit and kinda just wanted to enjoy the casino rather than having to get involved with authorities or w/e.

I don't even know why I hadn't considered not paying, I guess we didn't have the balls?


edit: obviously these are all lame excuses for something that's already happened. I'm trying to figure out the next step here.

One time i am about to get in a cab at the airport, cabbie is middle-eastern. I go to put my bags in the trunk and there's no room for them because it is almost entirely occupied by this giant tank with stickers all over it saying "FLAMMABLE". I ask "hey what's that thing?" and he says something like "I weel explain later".

It turned out this was my first ride in a car that ran on compressed natural gas.

Is this true, or do they just have substantially different incentives? If one's goal is maximizing your own safety and that of those around you, it's probably hard to argue with you, but I get the impression from 2+2 driving threads that that isn't necessarily a common attitude. (I have under 200 hours of driving experience myself, so not a lot of personal perspective on it.)

I mean, I definitely think that I'm a better driver than every cab driver in this city, but I think that the cab system isn't really defined by drivers' skills and more about safe/reliable transportation from one point in the city to another at any given instant in exchange for pretty significant amounts of money (in terms of hourly rate, cabs here are expensive, imo.)


edit: What I mean to say is, the taxi network in a system should be assessed as a whole, not as a sum of each individual part (ie. cab/cab driver, etc)

Anecdotally, it seems everybody believes they are a good driver. That's possible if your metric for good is not comparative, but in a relative sense it can't possibly be true.

You're kind of an idiot, you know that?

Gump's right I think. Your avg cab driver just has different goals.

This next notion may be VERY wrong- but...

Also I guess that some and potentially a lot of cabbies are somewhat new to their license. We're not shocked with an 18 year old kid who has only been driving for 2 years is an idiot. When the dude who just moved to the country 3 years ago and got his license 2 years ago sucks, but is 49, we don't just write it off as being a noob.