Police say that a 21-year-old woman was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver early this morning in Union Square. The incident happened around 1:30 a.m. when the driver, who was in a blue dump truck heading eastbound on 14th street, attempted to turn southbound onto Broadway at the same time the woman was crossing the street. "He didn't see her. It was a big truck, a dump truck," eyewitness William Cayame told the News. "The light was for her. She had the walk sign." more ›

Taxi TV is ear-shattering enough but at least there's an easily accessible "off" button. Sometimes, however, your driver may provide the entertainment. As part of the Taxicab Rider Bill of Rights, passengers have a right to control the volume of music—it states you have the right to "a noise free trip: no horn honking or radio." But, you know, it happens... and sometimes (like when alcohol is involved, mostly) it can even be sort of fun to whip through the city streets with a stranger behind the wheel while the music is turned up to 11. But not all the time. One man took this below video from the back seat of a cab this week to document the volume of the music the cab driver was playing—turns out you can go past 11 on the volume control! more ›

A tipster sent in this video that he took on New Year's night, January 1st, around midnight. The scene takes place on Elizabeth and Kenmare in Manhattan, and the guy who recorded it tells us that the "entitled hipsters got pissed at the 'off duty' light" and kicked off the cab driver's right side mirror after having some words with him. more ›

For the third time in recent weeks a livery driver has been brutally attacked while on the job. Last night around 10:30 p.m. Dame Ndiaje was shot in the arm and chin after picking up three men and a woman outside 1373 Pacific Street in Crown Heights. Ndiaje survived but is fighting for his life, according to the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers. more ›

A 68-year-old man standing on a sidewalk in Long Island City was killed when a car from the Ed Koch Queensboro bridge flew towards him. According to WABC 7, "Police say the driver of the car lost control, flipping onto the sidewalk on Queens Plaza South at Crescent Street just after 4 a.m. Monday." The driver, who was taken to Bellevue, lost his arm; a man who saw the scene and called 911 told the Daily News, "It was a horror movie - pools of blood running onto the street." more ›

We're used to hearing stories about cops getting drunk and doing something dumb and/or aggressive, but it seems more rare to hear about FDNY officers getting in trouble. But a cab driver alleges that he was beaten and robbed by four wasted FDNY officers on St. Patricks Day. more ›

After the bus crash that killed 15 in the Bronx on Saturday and the crash that killed two in NJ on Monday, lawmakers are becoming more and more concerned with the cheap buses that ferry people from Chinatown to various points on the East Coast. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have now co-sponsored a bill that would require bus drivers to receive training. That's right, as NY1 reports, "Currently, federal regulations do not require drivers to have training." more ›

Maybe sleeping on a busy subway is safer than sleeping in a cab—at least with the former you are most likely only going to have one thing stolen: your soul. On December 5th a cab driver may have taken advantage of one woman's sleep state and solitude. According to the NY Post, the driver is now the prime suspect in the theft of her phone and engagement ring, which she believes he stole while she was sleeping on the drive to her destination. more ›

Once a Jew-hating note scribbler, always a Jew-hating note scribbler it seems: Demetrios Apolonides was arrested by police yesterday on a hate crime charge of aggravated harassment for writing threatening, anti-Jewish notes on torn up vouchers and dropping them around Long Island. This isn't the first time Apolonides has done this dance though: it took the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force 16 months to catch him earlier this year for a similar crime. more ›

Police have yet to determine which of the six occupants in Sunday's fatal car crash was at the wheel. Two died and the four others were hospitalized after the crash, and witnesses say the group had been drinking before getting into the car, and the vehicle had been speeding around 90 mph before the crash. Investigators are waiting on warrants to determine which of the occupants' DNA matches the blood found in the driver's seat. At least two of the four survivors are seeking legal counsel. more ›

An undocumented immigrant has been arrested for a hit and run, mowing down four teenage girls and driving off with two still clinging to the hood of the car on Wednesday. Elias Garcia was arrested on charges of assault, reckless driving and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child after being chased down by a good Samaritan who witnessed the incident. Witnesses said Garcia stopped and started a few times after the accident, and Nassau County Police Lt. Kevin Smith told WCBS, "We believe what happened was he actually stopped at first, kind of looked at what he had done, and then began to take off again." more ›

Now that the Department of Transportation has revealed its latest congestion-fighting strategy—creating another pedestrian mall in Herald Square and giving buses half of 34th Street—the reactions are coming from pedestrians and drivers. Naturally, they have very different opinions! One driver complained to NY1, "Bad enough they closed Broadway. We can't even turn up and down Broadway. It will make it even more worse than what it already is," but a pedestrian said to the Daily News, "I wish they would do it tomorrow." more ›

Lolita Jackson, who works in the mayor's Community Affairs office, claims she was rebuffed by a cabby who sped away because she and her friend Segun Akande were black, telling the Post, "It was blatant, outrageous. He drove right up to us, stopped, leaned over the passenger seat to see us, then drove away." Jackson tried remembering the medallion number, but the driver who appeared at the hearing yesterday wasn't the right one, because her driver was "a Sikh. He had a purple turban on," she said. And Akande wondered, "This is New York City 2010. How could this happen to us?" Maybe nothing changes: back in 1999 actor Danny Glover actually filed a formal complaint with the TLC because so many drivers refused to pick him up. more ›

Did actor Roberto De Niro have his driver do his dirty work for him? According to the NY Post, his driver Vladimir Labissiere pepper sprayed a TMZ videographer earlier today at LaGuardia Airport after he had filmed the actor. This took place just before 11 a.m. in the Delta Terminal, but reportedly De Niro had already passed security and didn't witness the incident, which began with some verbal sparring. Labissiere managed to hit not only his target with a dose of the spray, but a passerby as well; he fled the scene immediately and the NYPD are trying to track him down to question him about the incident... which we assume is all on tape and will be hitting TMZ any minute now. more ›

As data rolls in, the Taxi and Limousine Commission says its $8.3 million estimate of overcharging by scamming cabbies "will shrink significantly." Much has been made of how drivers pressed a suburban rate button on their meters, charging passengers twice the normal city rate. But now TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus says many cabbies did so accidentally, and only at the end of trips when fares had already been calculated (they may have been trying to turn meters off, investigators think). "How can you overcharge a person at the end of a ride when you don't get money for it?" asked Daus at a City Council hearing yesterday. more ›

The manmodelhunt for Naomi Campbell is over. The 39-year-old allegedly hit her driver yesterday after he wouldn't tell her if her boyfriend had been cheating on her. By not speaking up, he landed himself an unexpected smack while driving down East 58th Street, which sent his head into the steering wheel. The model fled the scene when he pulled over. more ›

Bank robber Robert Krieg and his 32-year-old accomplice John Gregg rode in cabs to some of the banks they held up, and had drivers run the meter while they made off with the money. Taking cabs allowed them to get around town fast and made for a quick getaway but, at least for Krieg, it ultimately led to arrest after a cabbie commandeered his ID and described him to the cops. more ›

On Friday the Taxi and Limousine Commission began enforcing more strict rules and penalties for cab drivers who use hands-free cell phones or any electronic device capable of making non-emergency phone calls or texting, as well as music players and GPS locators. To make drivers comply, the TLC put enforcement agents outside Grand Central Terminal to check cabs as they drove past. By yesterday morning, a total of 142 summonses had been issued by TLC agents. Fox 5, on the other hand, sent a reporter on repeated cab rides and didn't find a single driver using an electronic device. more ›

A first-grade boy from Brooklyn, who suffers from a seizure disorder, took a tumble after being hit by a fellow student on his school bus this week... only to receive no help from the driver. According to the Daily News, the driver never even called for help when Armani Baker was clearly injured. Instead he kept driving and dropped the crying boy off at his stop, as he was bleeding from his head. more ›

Are city cabbies making "sun tea" in their vehicles? Of the 44,000 TLC drivers on the streets, most working 12 hour days, you can imagine how difficult it is for them to find a place they can relieve themselves. So many allegedly "resort to going in the street or peeing in bottles stowed under their seats." more ›

The city bus driver who stuck and killed 22-year-old Seth Kahn last week... will be ticketed. The Daily News reports that Jeremy Philhower will only receive a summons for failing to yield to a pedestrian, which is a noncriminal violation. This means he'll pay up to $150 or spend 15 days in jail (the latter is an unlikely outcome). more ›

It's unclear what, if anything, this has to do with rescuing the princess, but the Super Mario Bros. roughed up a cab driver on Staten Island on Halloween. They were caught on video by a gas station surveillance camera, and the whole thing would be a lot more amusing—the Post calls it a "joystick-up"—if these bastards weren't actually, you know, beating somebody up. (Or if the driver was dressed like a turtle.) more ›

Cab driver Medhat Mohamed has been given a bad rep for kicking a couple out of his cab, and now the NY Post's Andrea Peyser is standing up for him — giving him a lexical embrace, if you will. more ›

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. more ›

A Fox 5 cameraman happened to be shooting footage near the Ed Sullivan Theater yesterday for a segment on taxi medallions when an angry brawl exploded between a pedicab driver and a cabbie. It starts when the pedicab driver, fed up with the hack honking his horn behind him, tosses a cup of coffee at the cab's passenger-side window. You gonna take that cabbie? Not in New York! Check it out: more ›

After studying four intersections for 38 hours, Transportation Alternatives, the bicycling, walking and public transit advocacy group, has released a report with suggestions for the NYPD on reducing "the most dangerous driving behaviors." Some of the findings: "Traffic law violations occur three times every minute (157 times an hour) per intersection" and "On average, each intersection had 24 Failure to Yield violations per hour. Failure to Yield is the second most frequent human factor in causing motor vehicle crashes." more ›

Being behind the wheel of a New York City cab can likely supply you with plenty of fodder for a screenplay, especially when you're driving away from a job on Wall Street. Nearly a decade ago 45-year-old Mike Puerto quit his job trading derivatives and got his taxi license. He worked on a script for a Wall Street drama and, according to the NY Post, taped a sign behind his seat that read: "If you are a TV producer or executive, I have a pilot ready to go into production." Well, he's now got himself a producer, director of photography, agent and actors on the ready for his TV project, titled "M&A" (mergers and acquisitions). While networks expressed interest, a solid deal hasn't come through, however; so Puerto found advertisers and his plan is to buy time on Spike TV. The entourage he assembled all work for free (for now), and are convinced that Puerto is on his way to success. Paul Jarrett of Rosetta Films told the paper, "None of these people have been paid anything. It's just that Mike is such a captivating person that we keep coming back to see if he will pull all the pieces together and actually get this thing made." The sign in the cab now has this addendum: "will shortly go into production." more ›

What's the point of a suspended license again? Because some drivers who shouldn't be driving still are—with some tragic results. In Suffolk County over the weekend, a woman with a suspended license driving a minivan fatally struck a young man on his bicycle. Newsday reports, "With his father going blind, Daniel Mauricio Cornejo Carranza, 16, took a weekend job at a fast-food restaurant to help his family make ends meet"—the 16-year-old was biking to his early Sunday morning shift. Driver Karen Omara-Swett inititally thought she hit a deer but saw the clothing on the side of the road and called 911. She faces "third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle" charges and a fine; the police say the glare from the sun at the time might have been a factor. And on the LIE, Bronx resident David Nieves was arrested for allegedly riding his motorcycle at 120 mph; he was "charged with reckless driving, aggravated unlicensed driving and unlawful fleeing" (because he didn't immediately pull over). more ›

A 16-year-old with a learner's permit "struck and killed a 65-year-old pedestrian in Brooklyn" last night, 1010WINS reports. Stanislaw Zak had been waiting for a bus near Bay Ridge Parkway and 18th Avenue at 9:20 p.m. The teen, whose Mazda had struck another car before hitting Zak, will be "ticketed for driving with a learner's permit without a licensed driver"—it's unclear whether the teen will be charged with anything more. more ›