Taxi

"[6] A cabriolet is a type of horse-drawn carriage; the word comes from French cabrioler ("to leap, caper"), from Italian capriolare ("to somersault"), from Latin capreolus ("roebuck", "wild goat").

Both instituted fast and reliable postal services (conveying letters, with some post routes transporting people) across Europe.

The New York taxicabs were initially imported from France by Harry N. Allen, owner of the Allen-Kingston Motor Car Company.

Albert F. Rockwell was the owner of Bristol and his wife suggested he paint his taxicabs yellow to maximise his vehicles' visibility.

Radios enabled taxicabs and dispatch offices to communicate and serve customers more efficiently than previous methods, such as using callboxes.

[citation needed] Paris taxis played a memorable part in the French victory at First Battle of the Marne in the First World War.

[25][7] The Birmingham pub bombings on 21 November 1974, which killed 21 people and injured 182, presented emergency services with unprecedented peacetime demands.

This has changed though in countries such as Denmark, where tax regulation makes it profitable to sell the vehicles after a few years of service, which requires the cars to be well equipped and kept in good condition.

[31][32] Modifications of existing minivans such as the Mercedes Vito London Taxi and the Nissan NV200 have been introduced as a stopgap measures to fill the need for alternative products, however their acceptance by drivers is yet to be seen.

[33] In recent years, some companies have been adding specially modified vehicles capable of transporting wheelchair-using passengers to their fleets.

This feature is however a subject for concern amongst Licensing Authorities who feel that the wheelchair passenger could not easily exit the vehicle in the event of accident damage to the rear door.

The wheelchair is secured using various systems, commonly including some type of belt and clip combination, or wheel locks.

[36] Taxicabs in less developed places can be a completely different experience, such as the antique French cars typically found in Cairo.

Taxi stands are usually located at airports, railway stations, major retail areas (malls), hotels and other places where a large number of passengers are likely to be found.

[39] When a customer calls for a taxi, a trip is dispatched by either radio or computer, via an in-vehicle mobile data terminal, to the most suitable cab.

In the United States, a nut is industry slang for the amount of money a driver has to pay upfront to lease a taxi for a specific period of time.

Most experienced taxi drivers who have been working in the same city or region for a while would be expected to know the most important streets and places where their customers request to go.

In London, despite the complex and haphazard road layout, such aids have only recently been employed by a small number of 'black cab' taxi (as opposed to minicab) drivers.

This typically takes around three years and equips them with a detailed command of 25,000 streets within central London, major routes outside this area, and all buildings and other destinations to which passengers may ask to be taken.

[52] One study, published in the journal Atmospheric Environment in January 2006, showed that the level of pollution that Londoners are exposed to differs according to the mode of transport that they use.

[58][63] Two attempts by the Bloomberg Administration to implement policies to force the replacement of all New York's 13,000 taxis for hybrids by 2012 have been blocked by court rulings.

[citation needed] Other cities where taxi service is available with hybrid vehicles include Tokyo, London, Sydney, Rome and Singapore.

The TOP program gives local police departments the materials they need to train volunteer taxi drivers to be good witnesses and watch out for criminal behavior.

Taxi drivers' feelings about their occupation, including traffic chaos, social prestige, economic pressure, and job satisfaction, may impact on the subsequent driving behaviors.

However, one pro-deregulation study by Kitch, Isaacson and Kasper claims that the previous argument is a myth because it ignores the U.S. free taxi competition up to 1929.

Deregulation advocates argue that this prevented market mechanisms from solving information problems because new entrants have found it difficult to win new customers using new services or cheap prices.

[87] A Connecticut General Assembly report argues that deregulation fails to cause price decreases because taxi passengers typically do not price comparison shop when searching for taxicabs, and that fares usually increased with deregulation because the higher supply of taxis caused drivers' earning potential to decrease.

Seattle deregulated taxis in 1980, resulting in a high supply of taxicabs, variable rates, price gouging, short-haul refusals, poor treatment of passengers.

[89] Taxi companies claim that deregulation would cause problems, raise prices and lower service level on certain hours or in certain places.

[95] In South Africa, taxis were deregulated in 1987, resulting in fierce competition among new drivers, who then organized into rival cartels in the absence of government regulation, and which used violence and gangland tactics to protect and expand their territories.