GPS data as collected by TLC should have been beneficiary for the drivers, especially when they are the ones who actually are paying for GPS devices installed into NYC medallion cabs hence they must gain some benefits from this technology.
I was pretty sure or at least I was assuming we the drivers have few benefits with this technology, for example number of times when passenger complained about the fare price, I handed them their receipts and told to call 3-1-1 in order to place a complaint, by doing so I was assuming that GPS should have recorded the pick up time and address, route taken to destination and drop off timing and address and in case of him/her calling to file a complaint, TLC will look into that data.
Once I had an incident, I picked up a guy and girl from E 97th street, it was my first trip on Sunday evening and he told me to go to 116th street and St. Nicholas avenue. I took right onto E 97th street then followed by another right onto third avenue, upon reaching at E 116th street and 3rd avenue intersection he told me to stop there, I stopped the meter he paid by credit card, and ride was over fine, nothing happened. Next day my day partner started calling me about 11 a.m, I was asleep and I sleep like semi dead person kind of way, after many tries he called my home and have someone to wake me up. Finally when I spoke to him, he told me our meter has been locked and I have to call our management in order to unlock the meter, when I called the management I was told that I dropped off one passenger at 116th street and St.Nicholas ave on Sunday evening at 5:28 P.M and when the passenger was taking his stuff out from the trunk I drove off with his luggage inside and with open trunk, first I told her that I have Ford Escape, I really can't drive with my trunk open knowingly then I asked her time and day again, upon realizing incident happened just day before, I recalled the jobs and told her it never did happen and she asked me then why did the passenger call? "I don't know, what I know is I did not go to St. Nicholas Avenue yesterday, did you check my record from the GPS?" I asked her, when she checked the record I was right, our meter got unlocked. What I guess is happened the guy I dropped off on third avenue, after shopping took another cab to his destination, this incident might have happened but with another cab, not with me, but when that passenger pulled up the receipt he pulled the one I gave him earlier that day. This incident increased my faith in GPS and made me less worried of backseat bitting.
But this is not the case, GPS apparently records only pickup time/drop off time and relative addresses only, it means passenger can take you to the court and tell the judge that you have taken him to Manhattan, took two bridges from JFK to drop the passenger in Brooklyn, and you have to prove that it did not happen that way. Good luck fellow drivers.
I wanted to write about this yesterday but as usual overslept. I'm sitting at JFK taxi hold lot right now and writing this post using IPhone, it makes more sense as I'm going to tell news about mobile technology.
Taxi and limousine commission alongside with Sense networks has launched a new
App called CabSense yesterday, this new App will get your position from GPS on your mobile device and then show cabs using GPS data from yellow cabs GPS system, it will tell you how many cabs are available in the area using 5 stars for maximum chances to 1 star or no cab for lesser chances of available cabs.
App will also guide where to go nearby to hail cab, and upon shaking your iPhone it will also whistle for the cab -- hmm just hail me please -- anyway good App, technology on its best.
Only concern is when drivers went on strike for installing GPS into their cabs, they told TLC will monitor them and it is against constitution, TLC said it will only record pick up or drop off addresses, from this App it is clear that was not true.
Good thing for drivers is they can also browse the map to look for better chance of getting jobs, it might help us not to cruise empty for half hour or even an hour, if driver is not having good luck finding fares, Open the App and look for less competitive location instead of
trying on 6th Avenue.
How about TLC does its work before getting it published? What about the financial punch drivers have taken in less tips or even no tips, as many commenters were saying it on forums? What about the bad mouthed passengers who put drivers in situations like my fare always use to be $5.00 and how is it $7.00, ignoring the fucked up traffic driver had to go through?
Most agnostic thing was the reporting done on this matter by media, no news paper or channel had nerves to come and investigate this matter, come on there are 50,000 licenses taxi drivers in the town, how far did you guys had to go? one block? media was biased and failed miserably in this whole matter, not one of them have mentioned drivers view point on this and kept accusing them of cheating. This is how much respect hard working, tax paying driver have in this town of ourselves. TLC says something and everyone believes with out giving chance to the other side. Sure there were few actual riders, who do take cabs every day and appreciated the job done by city cab drivers, you can see the ironic people still smelling rat in the comments section of the latest news.
I already have made video to explain the matter, it was supposed to be public today but I couldn't finish few parts ,tomorrow I'll finish it up and post it, I just hope that who are still smelling rat can take their nose out of rat hole and see the reality.
Wow spring has already sprung and whole week was blessed with sun, I discovered weather does have effect on attitude, great weather translates to great attitude by drivers and riders alike, I also discovered accusation by TLC has played major role in my earnings this week, I've been doing (playing) survey with almost all of my passengers that if they have ever felt that driver has overcharged them and on end of every ride scored more in tips, even guy from Boston tipped $5 on $7 fare to a Yankees fan, isn't that great? I just told him about what he needs to look for when he is in taxi. This is how I start conversation, may I ask you few questions? when they affirm the request, my course is like
1) Do you live in New York? if yes
2) How often do you take cabs?
3) Does the fare from point A to point B is always similar?
I'm telling you it is fun to do this and later explain it to the passengers about TLC's accusations, until now only one passenger complained he has a receipt which says Nassau-West.
In this short audio cut from The Brian Lehrer Show Cabbies talked about the fare scam, which has given very bad reputation to NYC cab drivers.
I'm going to make a video and post it on my blog to explain that it is not temptation for making more money but most of the time this is just a mistake.
So this news is all over the place and TLC once again did a wonderful job for blaming almost every working cab driver in NYC for ripping money out of passenger's pockets, In this whole process TLC once again did not forget to remind productivity of GPS system installed in city medallion cabs, over which drivers went on strike, in every incident TLC's main objective seems to keep telling New Yorkers that drivers were wrong and GPS is big benefit to the public, whether it be lost and found items or overcharging matters.
So here is how this new story started, a cabbie was ripping passengers by running meter on out of town rate, one passenger complained and upon pulling his record TLC found that he was doing this for past six months and probably made $40,000 extras than he should have made in this period.
TLC took a further step and pulled out records for past two years for every cab driver and found that about 36,000 out of 48,422 drivers did the same thing and ripped $8.3 millions out of passengers pockets dishonestly. Question is as a cab driver do I believe this?
Not at all and here is my argument, there are 13,357 medallion taxis in NYC and most of them work on two 12 hours shifts accommodating two drivers per day, In Ideal condition there are 26,714 drivers working full time as cab drivers, now some drivers work 6 days or some may work 5 days, on their day offs part time drivers take the seat, lets assume industry accommodates 10,000 part timers and total number of working drivers sums up to around 36,000 drivers. Matter of fact is huge number of license holders do not work as cab drivers but keeping their licenses for some bad times as an opportunity plus there are fleet owners who have to keep their license but are not working drivers, in this situation TLC just told the new yorkers that every single driver is ripping them off, best message that could have been sent to all visitors, well done TLC.
Now lets come to the meter and GPS, first thing is why the meter not automated as it is when drivers take toll bridges and tunnels? What is purpose of GPS connected to the meter if process can't be automated? Taxi meter itself acts weired on times, for example when driver tries to put meter on hire some times it gives you "Con" and in this situation when drivers try to put meter on hire too quick it can jump to rate 2 or rate 3 depending upon how fast driver tried to hire it. But it is not done willfully or on purpose to cheat, it just happens sometimes and then drivers stop the meter and put it on hire again, but in future if TLC decides to come up with statistics it can again tell new yorkers and send message to tourists visiting new yorker and this is how new yorkers treat them, because cab drivers are new yorkers too.
Now after telling all drivers have done it, will TLC take time to actually look into the situation and tell how many of them did it just by mistake and then followed the standard procedure of stopping the meter and putting it on hire again? Basically TLC blamed meter fault onto drivers, even if TLC as it claims have found almost all drivers have done it and made it sound like they did it on purpose, why not now fine them to make big bucks for the city in this hard economic times? TLC wont do that because only purpose I think was to give drivers bad name. In the same article TLC after accusing 36,000 drivers, gave some what real number of cheats to about 3,000 drivers, which is still a huge number almost 5% of total drivers but 36,000 and 3,000 have a huge difference.
Other possible reason can be to stop drivers demanding their rights and raise in wages and not to get people support in this regard because now majority will think they make their money anyway, when in America average income has risen to almost 100% in past twenty years,there was decline in drivers income, current fare rate is cheapest in the nation and car leases are highest in the world. When is TLC going to look into that so even those 3,000 who have done cheating wont do it.
You might want to read about this matter on Taxicab Almanac written by fellow cab driver, and you should because he writes 1000 times better than I do and have full command on English language.
More than seven hundred cab drivers are ticketed since the new regulations of not using any electrical device has been introduced, three weeks earlier. Be happy new yorkers and soon to be parting TLC commissioner Matthew W. Daus, he can now live happily after saving the New York and new yorkers from these savages known as New York city cab drivers.
what do i think of these new regulations? cruel, inhumane, discriminatory and un-constitutional, before you jump on me and tell me that research has shown driving while on the phone is as dangerous as driving under influence, you will need to know, what is going on in reality.
I have read number of blogs, forums and on news websites, where people are commenting in favor of these new regulations, because they are made it to believe by TLC, city and media that these regulations will apply only when a cab is hired. In that case when driver has a passenger and still on the phone, I'm in favor of this, it should be enforced strictly, and it was so since I'm in cab driving business and also it is very much against customer service.
But this is not what these new regulations are about, new regulations prevent drivers to use any kind of electrical devices which includes Cell phone, blue tooth devices, GPS, Ipod and camera, even when they are not hired. Cab drivers are suppose to find legal parking to use any mentioned device. This is what it makes discriminatory, inhumane and un-constitutional. I do believe in all kind of research work provided by TLC to be correct, but I was unable to find any reference to New York city cab drivers alone instead research says drivers not New York city cab drivers, now if city is so concerned with safety of drivers, they should make laws for all drivers not only for city cab drivers, because when you make laws only for group of people not for the people, it is called discrimination.
One of my friend got the ticket, he was standing at fire hydrant and checking cricket score, for those of you who don't know, it is legal for a cab driver to stand at any fire hydrant in NYC unless he/she does not get out of his cab. He was ticketed for not being legally parked and using phone, this is what makes these regulations cruel. I myself got pulled over because police officer suspected me being on the phone while I was talking to the passenger.
Some how TLC does not regard driver as human rather thinks of driver as robot programmed to drive people from point A to point B for 12 hours, with out talking or having any kind of emotions, if a passenger get abusive, so what?, driver is a robot, he must not act in situations like this as human. Also robots are not social animals only humans are, it is very easy for robots to work in 2 feet of space with out talking to any one for 12 hour, after all they are programmed for this task. After 12 hours shift we will send them to recharge for next day's 12 hour shift. This is what makes it inhumane, Human needs to communicate to other humans especially with their loved ones, for whom they have chosen to act like robots.
But TLC does not forget to remind drivers that it cares for them, and for driver's own safety TLC is enforcing these regulations, cell phone can distract and can make you vulnerable to accidents, Oh yeah the Taxi Tv that we have fitted right behind your head is for your shoulder massages, so you can relax, and yes the partition that prevent you hearing from passenger and you have to take your eyes off the road to listen to the passenger, is no way distracting, you know taking your eyes off on busy 5th avenue will not end up in accident, it is only the cell phone that can cause accidents. And yes if some how you fail to respond to passenger's question and do not turn your head to make his majesty happy, we most likely will charge you of being rude to the passenger, But do not use the cell phone.
