A first taxi ride since July, occasioned by an urgent need to head out into the wider ‘Shire for work, is how I end up in slowly moving traffic on Guild Street one Tuesday morning. As we inch along towards the first set of traffic lights, the announcer on the radio points out what is bleeding obvious to us - that there are long tail backs on our favoured route. The taxi driver, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in that understatedly impatient way the young and restless have, gives things a few minutes before he fires up his TomTom device to assess what our routing options are. It turns out the longer route is the better one on this occasion - his device predicting that it is the quicker one by ten minutes. Being stuck with him, I shrug when he asks if I mind his taking the route. I don’t suppose I have a lot of choice, besides hopping out of his taxi and legging it, or calling off my trip entirely. Once we are out of the snarling traffic and heading out towrds my destination, the incessant tapping stops, all his nervous energy perhaps being dissipated by the manoveuring he has had to do to get us out of our spot of bother.
Clearly more relaxed now, he asks me what I am heading out into the ‘Shire for. I explain it has to do with work
It might be me, but I get the sense that some of the more intriguing conversations I have had over the last few years have occurred in or around taxis. The more I reflect on this the more convinced I am that the absence of a payback in terms of censure and or retribution inherent in anonymity is a powerful incentive to let loose as folk who frequent online forums know only too well. That in conjunction with the fact that once settled into a trip one is locked in perhaps act jointly y y profound conversations from the last few years have occurred in taxi cabs. Upon reflection, I suspect that something about the transient yet ineluctable nature of the taxi driver-passenger relationship can sometimes enable it transcend what should purely be a relationship based on a transaction, becoming an incubator of fascinating conversations. It is transient because it is by nature temporary – given the large number of cab drivers relative to the individual passenger, and the often significant variations in the times one needs a cab, it is a reasonable expectation to not have to run into a specific taxi driver more than a couple of times a year, and that only if one uses taxis a lot. On the other hand, once initiated, one is locked in to a given taxi-driver combination until the term – the length of the journey in this instance – expires, hence the sense sometimes that one must make do with whatever hand one has been dealt. Transience, I suspect, has played the greater part in enabling these unfettered conversations; particularly where these have veered into the territory of the colourful and cringe-worthy.On the part of the taxi drivers themselves, I have had to listen in on tirades lobbed in the direction of female drivers, and in one case a tale of cancer striking at the heart of a family (which turned out as a precursor for him asking if he could smoke in the taxi). The most extreme of these, on my part, involved a taxi run up to the Royal Mail processing centre up in the Altens area. Ahead of a trip to Nigeria, a friend had asked that I help pick up several packages he had ordered. Upon my arrival, it transpired that these packages were largely shoes and clothes. My response to the quizzing of the taxi driver on that occasion was to invent a Mrs S, whose near pathological addiction to shopping had left me making this afternoon run. Thankfully, I haven’t run into that specific taxi driver since then! The latest of these conversations thankfully took a less unsavoury note, the occasion being a first taxi ride needed because I had to head out into the wider shire for work. What became apparent as we settled in and flew past the first set of traffic lights was that we had a traffic problem on our hands – the traffic report on the radio highlighting long delays of up to thirty minutes in certain places due to roadworks induced closures. It was at this juncture that he fired up his new, trendy TomTom, which rightly identified the tail backs we were stuck in. A few key presses later, we had been offered a different route- much longer on a normal day but predicted to be quicker by his TomTom. I toyed with raising the fact that it was a longer route but managed to hold my peace. That turned out to be a good decision in the end as once we had made the detour we were soon merrily on our way out of town. That little episode turned out to be the spark that turned what had been a silent journey up until that point into a lively debate about the role of technology in our lives. He argued that whilst technology had its uses, it was making us mentally lazy. My counter argument was that that effect had nothing to do with technology itself but our response to it. If we used technology as a tool for outsourcing lower order brain function, perhaps that should free us to think about more serious, creative things? We never did reach a landing in the course of the thirty odd minutes we spent locked into each other’s company. His parting shot as we split having reached my destination was to hand me a card that had the city cab’s new taxi hailing service apps. Technology to the rescue again I suppose? Taxi driving as a mentally tasking task with a high barrier of entry
Technology as a disruptor – any advantages (leveller of entry requirements, harbinger of competing and tools for the user)
Wrap Up -Siri demo, card for hailing service u-book