Taxi Ride of Death
First story for catch-up? The story of attempted death on Chris and I. Oh yes, you read correctly. Last weekend we hailed a cab and head for the west side to babysit little Teddy for a couple of hours. I’ve mentioned before that cab drivers here are nuts! They drive fast, unruly, and well many don’t think the rules of the road apply to them. Let’s put an emphasize on the last one for this story.
Once we crossed the park we were driving down Central Park West towards Columbus, where my boss lives. Now, let me explain that pretty much every other street in New York are one ways and my boss happens to live on a one way street going east (and we needed to head west from Central Park West). As we are sitting at a red light the taxi driver had his turn signal to turn left down 83rd on. I didn’t pay too much attention because, as I said, taxis have rules of their own and they often do U-turns in the middle of the streets. I wasn’t too panicked until he did indeed start turning left onto 83rd against on-coming traffic! Better yet? He turned into the street with a cop being the first car coming towards us. I was freaking out, and the driver just said opps.. and turned back around. Luckily the cop was still a decent distance between us that we didn’t hit head-on but it was a pretty terrifying experience.
Oh it gets better though. So after our driver is trying to turn around then the cop comes after him and pulls him over. Fabulous right? What are you supposed to do when your cab driver turns down a one-way the wrong way and then gets pulled over by a cop?! Personally I was really to just bounce, but the cops didn’t seem too concerned we were in the back and the taxi driver failed to stop the meter after several suggestions by us. Finally he stopped it and we still had to pay for it, which I think we should have gotten a free ride if it was up to me! Unfortunately we were in a hurry and had to walk the rest of the way to our destination so I didn’t have time to write down the license plate number and report him. I have a feeling the ticket he got from the cops wasn’t all that cheap though.
Worst yet, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this happening! My boss was in a cab that turned onto a main avenue like Broadway with 3 lanes of cars coming on-going at them and the driver’s response was, “In my country that is the side of the road we drive on.”
Moral of the story, when riding in a taxi make sure you are also paying attention to the streets they turn down and the moves they are making, because apparently there are some clueless cabbies driving around!