A One Way Ticket To Homicidal Cabbie Land

We've all been there — it's raining out, you have somewhere to go, your buddy doesn't want to ride bikes because of the aforementioned rain, so you sack up and hail a cab, prepared to fork over a mini-forturne for a short 10 block ride. This was the case last night as Shmindsay* and I hopped in a cab at 19th and Valencia on our way up to Cafe du Nord. Alas, this was not to be your a-typical cab ride; little did we know that behind the wheel was a cab driver with a serious anger management problem and a dislike for cyclists.

Granted, the cyclist did not have lights on his bike, and it was an honest accident. The cab driver came within centimeters of ending this cyclists life, and naturally, the cyclist was pissed. Words were exchanged between the driver and the cyclist, and then the unthinkable: THE CAB DRIVER SLAMS ON THE GAS AND TRIES TO RUN THE CYCLIST DOWN. The cyclist is screaming at the cabbie, we're in the backseat screaming at the cabbie, and he won't stop. The cyclist maneuvers himself next to the cab and takes a swing at the cab driver and connects. Now the cabbie is super pissed and tries to run him down again, this time by repeatedly throwing the car in reverse then forward again. At this point Shmindsay and I bail out of the cab by doing a barrel roll (literally) and watch the scene unfold. The cyclist is trying to get to the sidewalk out of harms way and the cabbie is still trying to run him over. All parties involved are screaming at each other, I'm frantically writing down license plate, cab number, anything I can get.

After about 5 minutes the cyclist is able to call the cops and the cab driver pulls to the other side of the road and presumably does the same. We stick around, give the cyclist our names and numbers to give to the cops, then decide to walk to rest of the way.

The moral of the story is never take cabs. If you do, ask to see their anger management certificate of completion/marijuana prescription.

*names have been changed to protect those who barrel roll out of moving cabs like a boss/rookie.

[Unrelated topical photo by Hal Bergman]

Comments (9)

Cab number?

Truly terrifying for you and the cyclist. I hope the cops do their job.

Last time I took a taxi, the driver tried to take me the longer way (too tipsy to bike but not too tipsy to remember my way home!) and then scoffed at my decent tip. There are some good drivers out there, and I try to thank if we’re at a stoplight together or something, but my idealist attitude of “they drive for a living so they must be cool with traffic and road stress” is constantly proved wrong if I’m on two wheels or two feet.

Next time use Uber; polite drivers and the seats don’t reek of ass.

Fucking cyclists in this city are as bad as the pedestrians. Fuck them, if they paid more attention and rode in traffic like vehicles instead of running red lights riding too far out in traffic and generally fucking things up we wouldn’t all secretly wish they would die. This isn’t China get the fuck out of the way. I’m quitting my job to be a cabbie so I can murder someone who punches me like that. I love that when both parties are at fault for the incident this dumb ass hipster blog wants to defend the hipster.

SF cabs cost more than NYC’s and the cabbies here are homophobes and jerks. Fuck ‘em.

jesus fuck! Were you able to get the taxi number or anything?! That guy needs to lose his job at the very least, and preferably be prosecuted.

You have to report that kind of stuff to the cab company when it happens. They wont have any problem finding a replacement for that guy.

There’s no such thing as a “prescription” for marijuana.

A doctor’s *recommendation,* yes.
Rx, no.

Get it right.

As a pedestrian, I feel about many bikes the way that bikes feel about cabs.

I particularity hate having to run out of a crosswalk to avoid an oncoming bike who isn’t going to stop or even slow down more than 10% for the intersection.