How did the cab flip over? My theory: It’s an SUV and therefore higher off the ground. The other car was a sedan and therefore lower. The sedan pushed under the SUV and flipped it.

I once saw another car flipped over and actually witnessed the flip. It was in San Francisco, where the streets are famously hilly. One car was barreling up a hill and struck another car in an intersection. The car moving uphill (way too fast) had its nose in the air, so the other car served as a ramp. No one was hurt.

Perhaps the solution is smaller, slower cabs.

An “AP squib?” The AP employs people non-magical people that were born into wizarding families?

The ironic thing is, if this was a rare event like a crane collapse you’d have politicians falling all over themselves in trying to reform driving laws.

Cab drivers are paid far less, relative to other careers, than they were 30 years ago.

They used to be salaried employees — now they are self-employed, no-benefits independent contractors who have to rent the cab and medallian for the day and take the risk of not making enough to cover it. One reason they barrel to the curb the way similarly free market incentivized bike messangers roar the wrong way up the street.

They used to be natives, now they are mostly immigrants as a result of falling wages.

The flipside is that taxi fares are probably much cheaper relative to transit fares than they were 30 years ago, despite increasing surcharges. Kind of like airfares. You get what you pay for.

The only way to get better cab drivers here is to raise the fare so the drivers (not the fleet owners) can earn decent money. Then you’ll get less turnover, more experienced drivers and more competition for licenses (which will allow for raised licensing standards). Too cheap for that? We’ll just have to settle for third-world drivers working 12 hour shifts under tremendous pressure to turn over the meters.

London cabdrivers aren’t only good drivers and navigators, they’re also courteous to customers, pedestrians and other drivers. They also charge about twice what we pay.

Say what you want about how low or high a cabbie’s wage is, getting paid less than you should is not an excuse for doing the fundamental part of your job- in this case driving- poorly and recklessly.

“If they were only paid more” is not a useful argument.

(That would just buy them more minutes on the cell phones anyway)

@ getting paid less than you should is not an excuse for doing the fundamental part of your job- in this case driving- poorly and recklessly.

Absolutely. Also burger flippers shouldn’t spit in your food. And customer service reps shouldn’t hang up on you. But that’s the culture.

What’s scary is that those driving yellow taxi cabs are possibly better drivers than those driving black cars and even the city’s non commercial drivers since the insurance rates get exhorbitant after they have received moving violations and caused accidents.

They do travel all the time including when tired and distracted (on cell phones, making change, logging trips, looking for riders, etc.).

So long as the NYPD remains a we-don’t-care more-than-useless organization, the kind of driving that we have in New York will continue. To say the least, speeding and reckless driving are not enforced on New York streets.

Either we put the NYPD to work, and give them a commission for issuing speeding tickets, or we send them all home (without pay).

Grinner: what a strange article. Clearly the MPG standard could easily have been met with a car like the Toyota Camry Hybrid, instances of which have entered taxi service in San Francisco. Great fuel economy, spacious, safe.

Stowed in the trunk? Sure. Aboard?