The GPS

I love the new GPS systems in New York Taxis. Driving around, and seeing where you are in proximity to your destination. It’s really great.

Recently, the Taxi Drivers Association was up in arms about surveillance and losing their privacy. Hello, aren’t they at work? Shouldn’t their boss/supervisor know where they are or at least have an idea? To complain that the installation of the GPS is an invasion of privacy is a far stretch. It’s not as if their boss is filming them take a leak during a lunch break in some dank looking restaurant.

The whole GPS/Taxi and Limousine Commission unrest brings to mind a vacation I had in New York circa ’94. After a long night of partying, a girlfriend and I jumped into a cab. With only the physical address of where we were staying, which was a not-so-nice part of Brooklyn, East New York; we assumed the driver knew the streets of New York. After all, in order to drive a taxi in the London Metropolitan area, you have to pass the Hackney Carriage Exam. Doofuses are not permitted to drive London taxis. We assumed it was the same in New York.

With our landmarks vaguely in our heads - over the bridge, clock tower, roundabout, museum, wide road where the carnival is - and in this order, we shouldn't have any problems getting home. However, being a little liquored up, our sensors not as strong as we'd like, I noticed after getting off the bridge, we were driving along New York City's edge with the Hudson River to our right. Eventually we hit Linden and Pennsylvania. Any buzz we might have had at the start of the journey turned to fear. Fear of being taken hostage by an Indian cab driver, or being dumped, and left for dead in the 'hood of East New York. The meter read a whopping $53 when the taxi stopped outside the apartment on New Jersey Avenue.

Being South Londoners and deeming ourselves as "street tough" (if you saw us, you'd see how ridiculous this statement was), we weren't handing over that kind of money to a man who had no business driving a cab in the first place. But this particular driver wasn't stupid. He sped off, with us still in the cab, and circled the area in an attempt to confuse us, until we agreed to pay him at the least $40. Had the GPS system been in use then, it would have been a lifesaver; his arse would have gotten reported and the GPS would have backed us up.

So in retrospect, I can understand cab driver’s resistance to change after their long reign in freedom. Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. Gone are the days of roaming the streets of New York, in complete control of which route they take us in. Now it’s all about the digital trail. Technology....ahhh, a wonderful thing.