Sickos

A ride across town shouldn't come at a cost to the passenger's blood pressure.

So writes Ottawa journalist Kate Heartfield about her city's cabbies. Sound familiar ? What to do when your cabbie is obviously on edge; late for coffee; short of money; low on speed ? Yes, recently I heard of an ambulance driver who witnessed a cabbie 'smoking a pipe of ice', presumably. Phew.

Those drivers are out there. But in this market, we passengers need the angry drivers more than they need us. We wait for them, not the other way around. We've no leverage.

No leverage ? Rubbish. There's nothing a cabbie fears more, even than being mugged, than cleaning up 'sick'. It's the magic word when needing to control an aggressive driver... "Driver, can you please slow down/relax, I'm feeling - a little sick/maybe ill/not very well."

If he then proceeds to stop the cab and order you out, then try... "It's okay, I've just - left hospital/become pregnant/ruptured my rectum"...or whatever. Just lie, heavily.

Comments

[Lee]

Hi Adrian...I've just discovered that you're back! Pretty slack, aren't I? It would appear I've a lot of reading to catch up on. Mixed together with all the writing I have to do on my own two blogs...I'll have little time for anything else! But, hey! Who cares!

Good to have you back! :)

[Becker]

I don't know about weird cabbies but the sentence "I'm gunna be sick" or any of the combinations is more effective than a red light at getting a cab to stop. The funny thing was a female copper once said she felt sorry for me while I waited for a pax to finish being sick. Don't know how she worked that one out I did nothing but waited while in her job she has to go deal with much worse.

[mc]

Wonders if it works internationally?... We took some scary-a** cab rides in Tunisia where honking replaces street lights and every street is a passing lane. We had many close brushes with death and I'm sure the imprints of my nails are still in some of these cars' seats.

[adrian]

No worries Lee, welcome back, I've been back a week or so. Whilst the sabbatical was just the tonic, the loss of many readers was unfortunate. Hopefully they'll all wander back in time.
Becker, couldn't agree more, cops have it much worse.
mc, I guess you'd need to rapidly access a translation book. Though I'd be surprised if it didn't work. The implications of 'sick' are surely universal.

[CanberraCabbie]

Heh. If a passenger looks to be a little under the weather, I tell them, "If you feel like you're going to throw up, just say the word, and you'll see how fast a cabbie can stop!"