Taxis Safer than Other Cars

Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant, released a study that shows taxi and livery cab drivers have less accidents than regular drivers. Thereby, the perception of taxi rides as being dangerous is false, as cab drivers spend thousands of hours on the road. Here are three interesting points from the study:

- For a typical Manhattan resident who takes 100 cab trips a year, the chance of being injured as a taxi passenger is 0.4% over a 10-year eriod, at current crash rates.
- Taxis and liveries cause injuries to pedestrians at a lower rate than do other vehicles, but cabs are more likely to cause injuries to bicyclists than are other vehicles.
- While injury rates are lower for taxi passengers than for occupants of other vehicles, the severity of injury is greater for those passengers who are injured in a taxicab. Low rates of seat belt use and the presence of the safety partition account for this disparity.

Definitely buckle up when you're a cab - we know someone sitting in the back of a cab when it was rear ended and her face was seriously bruised and needed plastic surgery. The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission did not ask for the study, but the NY Times reports they were "happy to receive it," with TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus saying, "This is one of the most important studies we've seen."

We do prefer taxi cab driving relative to out-of-towner driving - how about you? And there was a big big accident this morning involving a cab and pedestrians at 49th and Madison.

Photograph of taxis on Second Avenue and 60th Street from Triborough on Flickr