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It's already illegal for cab drivers to use cell phones while driving—even hands-free—but that law's even more scoffed at than the city's futile jaywalking prohibition! So now the Taxi and Limousine Commission is taking on the seemingly impossible task of separating hacks from their phones, by proposing heavy new punishments for gabby cabbies.
Current laws only ban talking on cellphones, but the new restrictions would ban the use of any technology capable of making non-emergency phone calls or texting. Drivers would also be prohibited from wearing a Bluetooth device, even if it's not on. Also verboten: playing music and taking pictures. In fact, the only company a driver would have left on his or her lonely 12 hour shift would be voice-operated GPS—this is, besides (gulp) us, in the backseat.
The penalties are heavier too, and will get harsher for each violation within a 15-month time frame. Strike one will be a significantly higher fine than the current $200 plus a mandatory TLC "refresher" course. The driver's license would be suspended, plus another fine, for strike two. Third strike is you're fired. TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus tells the Post, "Every driver will be prohibited from even wearing a Bluetooth device on their ears and after three strikes will be out of our industry and off the road."
There will be a public hearing on the new rules before they go to a vote by the TLC board in November or December. The news comes on the same day officials revoked the license from a cabby who fatally struck an 8-year-old boy in Harlem in August. Witnesses said that driver Shaiful Alam was talking on his cell phone at the time of the accident, but investigators reportedly decided that was not true. However, they did discover that Alam had an "astounding" 11 points on his license from July 2007 to July 2008, and should have had an automatic license suspension.
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Rules and bans like this are good and all (when they serve the oublic good which this does IMHO), but the real issue is enforcement.
Should read "public good." Proofread FAIL
Ah, a market for my new hearing-aid shaped BT set.
eh let them talk. I'd rather they be jabbering at someone on their phone, rather than trying to talk to ME.
I can feel a hack strike coming up...
what in increadible waste to time, resources, money, and space on Gothamist - this will never work!
Bloomberg really hates the cab industry.
I prefer they know how to drive, speak some English, obey traffic laws, and bathe regularly.
But um...I like it when cabbies are on the phone. That way they don't want to talk to me and that's how I like it.
As long as they speak in low tones, I'm with you there.
So would any of you threaten to report your driver if he was on the phone?
Am I the only one that likes talking to these guys?
I enjoy being shmoozed for my tip money.
I like talking to them, too. Especially after a night of drinking. It pisses my girlfriend off something awful, but I would hate to have a bunch of people treat me like a silent servant all day. Also, more than once in a while, they'll get all anti-Semitic or reveal some screwy ideas about women, and then it's just fun with the rubes.
Good point about them needing to schmooze for their tips. The ones who talk to me (if I'm in the mood to talk) and have some wacky story to tell get a much bigger tip from me. The ones who don't listen to my instructions because they are on the phone and not paying attention, get much less or none.
I agree with more than once and a while they have crazy ideas about women. Makes me think the cab suddenly became a time machine and we were thrown back about 200 years.