Park Slope Taxi Tales, Part Two: Taxi Accident

[Via TheCarConnection.com]

This is the second part of a three-part series on my time driving a taxi out of the garage on 4th Avenue in Park Slope. Read Part One here! 

NYC cab drivers are known for driving like maniacs. I didn't. But there was this one time I did get into an accident...

I was coming up to the corner of Hester and Chrystie. It was the end of the shift and I was just trying to get to the Manhattan Bridge to head back to Brooklyn. I can't remember if I had to piss but I'm sure I did. Badly. Traffic was terrible. It's always terrible. But when you're a cab driver, you don't get the same level of road rage that you normally do as a casual driver. Your sanity can't really permit it.

In a rush though, I tried going around somebody and I gunned my engine. Wouldn't you know - I scrapped the shit out of the side of a brand new Toyota Corolla. It looked like somebody ran alongside them with a yellow paint brush and Wolverine's claws. There was an Asian family inside the car, too. They didn't speak any English. We were in Chinatown and somebody ran out of a store to translate. There was no getting around it: cops would have to be called.

I pulled over and waited. You know in Detroit right now it takes 58 minutes for cops to respond to a 911 call? In NYC that day it took about 10 minutes. It felt like a lifetime though. I sat there with my papers ready and I was sure of two things:

First, I was going to get a ticket. In a city where a simple parking ticket costs $200 how much is hitting a Chinese guy in a taxi cab? At best, I figured my entire week of work would be wiped out. All of those 4AM mornings and sleeping pills at 6PM so I get enough sleep to drive a car. For nothing.  

Second, I was going to get fired. They can't just let me go around crushing Corollas. Driving a taxi was a last resort for employment. 'I should just walk a block over to the bridge and throw myself off,' I thought. 'I don't even care anymore at this point. Whatever.'

And then I remembered. I had a fare in my car. Yes, I had a passenger (believe it or not, cabs do take people to Brooklyn). As you can imagine, he was pretty spooked by the grazing. After he calmed down he checked on me and the other car. Apparently he took a CPR class. He was so helpful to us. Nah, I'm kidding. This is New York. He cursed, tried convincing me to leave the scene of the accident, demanded I take him over the bridge and come back because he hired me and then told me to fuck off before throwing a $20 at me. All in all though, I've got to say I was pretty happy about the $20. Meter only read $8.

So the cops arrived. They immediately checked on us and found no injuries. And after taking our information, they said we were okay to leave. I asked for the ticket I expected I was getting. But shockingly, the cop told me there was no ticket. And while I should have been more relieved, knowing I was just driving back to the garage to get fired was weighing heavily on me.

I drove to the garage and was brought into a back room. I met a boss I've never seen before. He was chewing on a cigar. 

"So you crashed the car?" he asked.

"Well I wouldn't call it a crash. More like a scrape," I said.

"Did you fucking kill anybody?" he barked.

"Uh. No. Nobody was hurt," I responded.

"Ok. Come back tomorrow," he said. 

And that was it. I didn't get fired. Because nobody gets fired.

Later I saw cars come in on tow trucks. Completely demolished. And I learned the deal. Some guys own their own car. If they get into an accident it's terrible because they have to pay for the repairs. If they're smart they drive carefully. However, most guys work for a garage. Insurance companies are already charging management the maximum allowable by law. And the repairs aren't that much. They do all the work themselves and buy used vehicles for the parts.

I'd imagine if you totaled a car every day for a week they'd stop letting you work. Short of that, though, you are paying so much to lease the vehicle they'll keep giving them to you. Really the only thing you have to worry about is getting a ticket. And fucking killing somebody. Nobody wants that. So as a cab driver, the only thing stopping you from driving like a dangerous criminal fleeing a bank robbery is human decency.

And apparently, the need to pee. 

For the third and final installment of 'Park Slope Taxi Tales,' I'll be answering some FAQs. Every wonder what's happening on the other side of that plexiglass? Now's the time! Hit the comments section with your questions!