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  • Taxi!

    I live in the lovely city of philadelphia. many people bash it, and are right to do so on some area's, but I love this city... it has it's problems though. one being, TAXI'S! I despise almost every one of them. for the following reasons

    lines don't matter

    riding my bike, walking or driving my car, I see it all the time. a taxi driver going in and out of traffic, cruising on the lines, or in the bike lane. apparently they ignore every line of the road and only dedicate the 2 brain cells they may have towards getting from point A to point B. everytime I ride my bike I tighten up when i see a taxi ahead, beside or behind me. I know they don't care about bikes, or anyone for that matter, so I always have to watch myself when around them.

    inching on the light... or gunning it on a red

    crossing the road with a taxi on red is an interesting experience. taxi's apparently have no patience when it comes to a changing light. the light just turns red, so you know it will be red for a while... but they stop... then slowly inche over the box (the cross walk area of an intersection) while people are crossing. I almost got into a fight with one taxi driver when he almost hit my legs inching up when the intersection turned yellow (mind you i entered the cross walk while green). I slammed my hands on his hood, called him a very bad name, and told him to watch himself. he yelled at me in some other language and sped off, nearly hitting another taxi up ahead who was dropping off.

    Sometimes they just go when all the lights are still red. every intersection has a few seconds of all red, so any cars in the intersection who entered on yellow can get out. this causes problems with cyclists, and pedestrians who are still crossing. but they don't care...

    oh, you need to be dropped off here? screw those parking spaces, lets stop right in traffic

    university city is a hot spot for taxi stops, especially on weekends. but it is also an area with more parking than most, and alot of fire lanes wide open and easy for drop offs. but taxis don't look ahead. when the passanger says stop, they just stop. regardless of who is behind them... OR IN THE BIKE LANE!, they will just stop without warning.

    Parallel parking

    for a job that requires you to drive every single day, they sure are terrible at parallel parking. at my work, there is a 3 spot taxi stop for a hotel. I see so many taxi drivers attempt to park, and sometimes take 5-10 minutes to do so, while blocking a whole lane of traffic. most of the time, they end up with 2 wheels on the sidewalk.

    some don't even know where they are going

    sometimes i need to take a taxi, when the trolly is out and its raining. sometimes i get a driver who has no idea where i want to go. i give him the intersection of a well known street and a numbered street (most of philly is grided, so its not hard) and they won't know... but ALL of the taxis have GPS systems in them now, yet I have never seen one use them. after i gave the guy the directions, i asked him why he didn't use the GPS. he told me "I don't know how".... what? either your bosses train terribly, or you just didn't care... but it's there for that reason! use it!i won't judge you, I just want to get home.

  • #2
    Now that 99.999% of taxis have GPS's in em (a good idea as it is) this means drivers literally do NOT need to know anything about the city they work in.

    They just follow the computer.

    I argued with a guy once when I was in college because the 'GPS was telling him where to go' and he obviously had SOMETHING punched in wrong as he drove right BY my street about 3 times before i finally said 'STOP TEH CAB' and got out and just walked the.. block or so to my house.

    Please drivers at least KNOW the area you are working in. I mean I can't work at the hospital here and not know where stuff is.

    'where's ER?' ' oh umm.. hmm.. i'm not sure.' 'u work here?" 'i sure do!' 'where are you RIGHT NOW" 'oh umm hmm.. i'm not sure hang on let me check the computer'

    sigh.
    and yes horrific drivers. I'm not a perfect driver but i'm fairly good i'd say.
    Common sense... So rare it's a goddamn superpower.

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    • #3
      I think it should be required that they atleast know how the streets are lined up, and where major tourist areas are. I used to live by the philly zoo... you know... the only zoo in the city. so when i get a taxi I tell them, "drive to the zoo, I live near there" and normally they know exactly where it is. but one guy started going in the opposite direction. I said "uhhh... where are you going?" and he said "its on gerard right? I'm going to gerard". he was right, but gerard curves, so he was going away from my house by going toward gerard in the area we were at. I had to tell him, step by step, how to cut off 15 minutes on the trip. I still had to pay 5 bucks more than I normally do because he had to turn around... ugh.

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