Your worst enemy on the road part 1 - The Taxi Driver

I'm in rant mode, today.

My ride in to work is at best five kilometers. Not far and some would say a complete waste of time, but i'm usually late and totally lazy so the motorcycle it is. Given the state of driving in the city of Toronto, some might even call me suicidal. Today, I have to agree.

More often than not, I see at least one taxi driver being a complete arse. This morning, I saw three. Firstly, there was the cab that ran a red light. I had a green and was just about to pull off when the cab sails straight over the intersection. It's happened to me before and thankfully i wasn't committed to a head-down/arse-up moto-gp style launch otherwise he'd have broadsided me.

The next was everybody's favourite - the illegal U-turn in the major road. Cabs do this all the time. I can imagine the call in the cab: "someone needs a pick up a few streets away. Can you do it?". All of a sudden, the cab driver turns into Batman or Jensen Button and decides to get there as fast as they can. It doesn't matter that the road is teeming with traffic. If there's a sniff of a gap, they're going for it. Even if I am actually in that gap. Luckily, I can see this happening. My satefy tip for today is any time you see a cab parked up in the bicycle lane, they're going to U-turn any second, so fingers on the levers.

The final one was the best, and it's something I've never seen before. A taxi driver actually stopped to let someone in. Of course the someone he stopped to let in was another cab (you didn't think for one minute they'd stop to let a regular car in did you? As you know, they like to pull up and block the intersection so you can't). The best bit was that he was doing fifty (in a forty zone) when he decided to slam the brakes on to do so. I swear he locked his rear wheels as he came to a stop. I know I did (thank you ABS). I'm just glad no-one was behind me.

Now, I've met lots of cab drivers and most of them are lovely people. What makes them such assholes when they get behind the wheel? Is it part of their training?