GTFO!

Video [Source]

For some reason, I am thinking about people I kicked out of my cab over the years. With each passing year, I ended up kicking more people out of my cab than the year before. There was something about ignorance, mixed with stupidity, and a dash of hubris -- repeating itself over and over again, day in and day out, year in and year out, -- that became increasingly painful to me.

During my first summer, I picked up a car load of women from somewhere in Hamilton's north end, wearing clothes they bought at BiWay. They were going to Burlington... probably to play bingo. As I drove along York Blvd. they started complaining about the taxi meter. I was green as grass but I was already sick of hearing complaints about the taxi meter. Then it went to the next step: "This trip only cost $3 last time I took a cab."

Last time? When was that? 1926? Without a reference time, the estimate is meaningless.

So, on it went. I developed the impression that, regardless of whether the meter was accurate, my passengers intended to dictate the fare to me. I wasn't in the mood for such a one-sided negotiation. I pulled to the side of the road and told them to get out. I don't know if they complained to the office or not, but I never heard a word about it. That was one advantage of driving a taxi before cell phones, I guess.

Then there was this White guy, about forty years old. As soon as he got in the back seat, he started barking orders at me. "Turn right on Hughson, then right on Jackson, then right on John and take me up the mountain." I don't know what his problem was. Maybe he thought all cab drivers took "the long way around" to inflate the fare, and coming off like a drill sargent would prevent that from happening. The alternate route he demanded was no shorter than the usual route. It was a six of one, half dozen of the other situation. But I didn't argue. The customer is always right.

On the way, he ordered me to stop at the KFC on Concession St. so he could buy food. I told him there was no KFC on Concession but he ordered me to believe there was a KFC on Concession. So I drove along Concession. There was no KFC. He finally admitted there was no KFC there.

After this, I gently offered him a suggestion. I told him about the KFC at Mohawk Rd. and Upper Gage. He must have already known it was there because he didn't argue. "Okay, take me there."

When we arrived at the destination on Nebo Rd. the meter read $19.90.

"Make it $20," he said, "And give me a receipt."

Tipping is optional, of course. But after putting up with this guy's snot-face attitude, ten cents is not a tip. It's an insult.

I made out a receipt for $19.90 and handed it, and a dime to him. He said, "I don't want that." I replied, "Neither do I."

Some time later, I got the same guy from the GO station. I didn't recognize him at first, but when he went into his "Turn right on Hughson, then right on Jackson, then right on John and take me up the mountain," routine it all came back.

I pulled away from the stand and started to drive toward James. That was always the route I would take to ascend the mountain via the Jolley Cut. Muscle memory took over and I forgot the sargent's specific commands. As we entered the Hughson intersection he started yelling at me.

"Turn right here!"

By then, it was too late to make a right turn. I would have had to turn across the right lane which would be a dangerous maneuvre, and almost certainly illegal.

But he became more enraged. "T U R N R I G H T H E R E ! R I G H T ! R I G H T !"

Something clicked in me. I had had enough of this guy.

I pulled over to the left and told him to GET THE FUCK OUT!

And, "Do you think you own me?" though not in exactly those words.

He complained to the office and I had to speak to the boss. After a two-minute conversation with the boss he said, "Sounds like that guy has a problem."

And I drove back to the GO. To "Work."

Canada has no Founding Principles other than State Power

Paul Craig Roberts often gets it exactly right. In this discussion of the destruction of America's founding principles, I find myself in agreement with PCR.

Even though I am a Canadian citizen, I have always been an American owing to the fact that I have long recognized that America's principles are my own.

Canada, on the other hand, was founded upon state supremacy. Look at our Charter of so-called "Rights and Freedoms." It is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is a statement of permissions and privileges, revokable at any time by politicians, and their appointed judges. It stinks to high heaven.

What else does it mean to say, "While the Charter protects these rights against government actions, Section 1 allows for reasonable limits prescribed by law that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. It also affirms Canada’s multicultural heritage and recognizes existing Aboriginal and treaty rights." In other words, Section 1 allows for "reasonable limits," which is a matter of opinion, that can be manipulated in the service of sleazy politicians in accordance with whatever sleazy agendas they promote.

What is "reasonable" to some woke lunatic is far from reasonable to anyone with a shred of common sense. So, a correct interpretation of Section 1 basically means that your rights, or lack thereof, are to be determined by those who have the guns. As I said, it's not about "rights." It's about permissions and privileges.

This explains why Canada has now transitioned into a primitive caste system.

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The Erosion Over Time of America’s Founding Principles

The Carney Grift Goes On

Brash entitlement and vested interests on display in Ottawa

This is an updated version of a blog entry I made almost ten years ago. I was motivated to review it after I heard about Nova Scotia’s updated Traffic Safety Act.

For the record, I recognized the danger in replacing safe two-way radio dispatch technology right from the start. To reinforce my suspicion, I hit the sidewalk curb while trying to get my mobile data terminal (MDT) to respond to my finger taps. "Just tap an app!" Yeah, right. I had to buy a new tire. At least I didn't hit a pedestrian.

The first time I took my thirteen-year-old daughter for a ride in my cab with the new MDT installed, she exclaimed, "Oh daddy, is that safe?" She saw what all the geniuses at city hall were blind to. City regulators not only approved of, but mandated computerized taxi dispatch. "No. It isn't," I replied.

In a grudging acceptance of the potential danger associated with MDT technology, there were some notifications advising drivers to pull over and stop before becoming hypnotized by the digital seduction. Casual observation of drivers in any industry would reveal to any sensible observer that this advice would be almost completely ignored. Google tends to agree with me. Note: At the time MDTs were imposed on the Hamilton taxi industry, no "In-Motion Lockout" technologies had been installed. The Uber cab company has supposedly implemented some in-motion lockout features on its apps, but drivers must still take their eyes off the road.

During my very first meeting as a member of Hamilton's Taxi Advisory committee, I raised numerous objections to the newly imposed Taxi Driver Training School. One of the brokers enthusiastically endorsed the taxi driver toilet training mandate, virtue-signaling to me, "But, Hans, if it saves one life it will be worth it." I responded, "If you were really concerned about saving lives, you would not be installing those distractive devices in all of your cabs!" I knew he didn't give a rat's ass about saving lives, especially if it might cost him any money. His reaction took me by surprise. Instead of a defensive response, he covered his face with his hand and almost physically shrank in his chair, as if he was hoping no one else in that room heard what I said. He fucking well knew I was right.

Thinking back to the days when a taxi shift could include non-stop driving for an entire shift, the potential for major collisions would have gone parabolic with MDT use. Fortunately, in this context, city regulators had saturated the city with so many newly issued licenses that almost every cab sat parked for about 45 minutes of every hour. Coincidentally, the odds of serious collisions were thus seriously mitigated. There is nothing safer than a parked taxi.

In short: Safety never is a priority for politicians despite numerous declarations to the contrary.

There ends my update. My original rant follows. Stay tuned for the video I have embedded at the end.

Bring back Safe Two-Way Radio Taxicab Dispatch Technology.

The majority of collisions in Ontario are caused by distracted drivers. Don't text, read, eat or anything that distracts you. JUST DRIVE. pic.twitter.com/rkDMDQt4uo

— City of Hamilton (@cityofhamilton) March 12, 2017

In short: Using computers to dispatch taxis is IDIOTIC.

I'm old school taxi. I spent most of my "career" in this business using two-way voice radio.

You could operate your taxi without ever taking your eyes off the road.

There was a time when being a taxi driver, contrary to popular perception, actually involved a lot of skill.

I have been in the business for long enough to remember those days. The relationship between a good dispatcher, and a good driver, could be made to harmonize like good music. Then someone came up with the idea that it would be better to use computers to allocate ride-sharing requests. That was when it all started to turn into shit.

Far from being an enhancement of communication for the purposes of taxicab dispatch, the introduction of mindless computer algorithms to the task of dealing with the innately rough and tumble process of "matching riders with drivers," has been a disaster on many fronts, for both the front-line providers of ride-sharing services, and the customers.

There was a time when the two-way radio could have been regarded as a "disruptive technology" just like Uber's app.

From Wikipedia:

"The first major innovation after the invention of the taximeter occurred in the late 1940s, when two-way radios first appeared in taxicabs. Radios enabled taxicabs and dispatch offices to communicate and serve customers more efficiently than previous methods, such as using callboxes."

I saw through the scam when the taxi brokerage I was signed with in 2007 decided to migrate to a computerized dispatch system.

It was completely obvious.

1 - the brokerage would no longer have to hire skilled, experienced, knowledgeable dispatchers to verbally allocate ride-sharing requests. Instead, they could recruit lower paid call-takers to simply type addresses into a computer.

It saved money for the brokers.

It did squat for the operators. (Who were forced to pay for the useless hardware and software upgrades.)

2 - whereas, previously, the broker had to rent out parking spaces for its cabs to queue up during slow periods when trip rationing was necessitated, the computer allowed the cabs to sit anywhere. And they did. This resulted in greater aggravation to the public as the cabs started to queue up in no-stopping zones, beside parking meters, hospital ramps, and areas known to be frequented by taxi-using foreign students in my city.

It also increased the probability that any individual cab that was dispatched to a high-frequency pick-up zone would end up being "scooped" by another hungry cab that was already loitering there.

This phenomena lead to the increased probability that an individual driver who was dispatched to a high-frequency zone would simply ignore the call, knowing that the probability he had already been scooped by a loiterer was about 95%. And this led to lower service reliability.

Of course, there was that remaining 5% of the time when the caller had not been scooped up by a loiterer, and ended up having to call a second or third time before they could actually get a driver to respond. Which led to complaints about the "unreliability" of taxi service. (Which was itself exacerbated by the City's insane policy of issuing unnecessary taxi licenses, which led to an increase in the number of vacant taxis, which were thus, increasingly available to scoop other cabs rather than running their own trips. In the "old days" when most cabs were actually engaged, there was a much lower probability that a corner call, or a Tim Horton's, or a gas station customer would be scooped by a vacant taxi. This failure of government taxicab regulation fueled the popularity of app-based dispatch systems where the customer could track the progress of their cab, even if HE ended up not arriving either.)

In other words, computerization of taxicab dispatch did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to increase the efficiency of matching of riders with drivers. In fact, it led to increased confusion and a significant waste of money, time, and gasoline, along with public and customer frustration.

But it did save money for the brokers, who pay neither for the glitchy hardware and software, the wasted time, nor the gasoline wasted by their hapless operators.

Again, it did squat for the operators.

AND EVEN WORSE!

It involved the installation of distractive devices in every taxicab, which led to a higher risk of death and injury on the roads. This is indisputable. ("Three seconds. That's all it takes.")

If the phony politicians and other interest groups, like Uber-partner MADD Canada, REALLY gave a shit about SAFETY they would be calling for a total ban on ALL distractive taxi dispatch technologies and a call for the return to the minimally distractive two-way radio system of taxicab dispatch.

I've been harping on this distractive technology angle for ten years now, even before Uber existed.

I am still waiting for someone to say, "He's right, you know!"

A Stinky Road Trip Story

Offed a drifter?

Someone asked that on Facebook the other day.

The phrasing threw me. It didn't make sense in context. Maybe it was written by the same guy who writes the instruction manuals for electronics made in China.

So, have I ever "offed" a drifter, you may ask?

No. But I left one stranded.

It was May, 1980.

I had first thought of making the trip from Calgary to Hamilton back on Christmas Eve, 1979, sitting alone in a rented townhouse in Calgary. It was my week off. There was no furniture anywhere, except in the living room, where I had placed a few short logs, about 30 inches long and about 10 inches in diameter. I'd picked them up from the side of the lease road on my way home from the rig I was working on near Cochrane, Alberta. Loffland Rig 89. I also had a sleeping bag and a brand-new colour TV. I had arrived. I had everything I needed.

When a friend first saw my furniture layout he snickered. "What is this? Early Pioneer?"

There were a few minor things to ponder before deciding to do the Hamilton run. My gas tank had a leak, which meant frequent gas station visits to pump a gallon or two into the sieve-like tank, and to make sure the plastic gas can I carried in the trunk was full. If you have a leaky gas tank, always be prepared.

There was also the fact that my heater had conked out. I had to constantly scrape the inside of the windshield when I drove anywhere. In my mind's eye, I saw myself stuck in a ditch beside the highway, somewhere in the middle of Saskatchewan, in the middle of the night, scraping ice from my windshield to see outside, with nothing but a sleeping bag and that furniture in the back seat, which I could burn for a campfire or build into some small structure to keep me warm. I decided that a two-thousand-mile drive across the frozen prairies, at night, without a cell phone, posed an unacceptable degree of risk. Plus there was that escalating vibration. So I aborted the plan. Until May of 1980.

Finally, I was cruising down the highway smilin', on my way back to Ontario. It was pitch dark. The road was practically empty. A song was playing on the radio.

I've been drivin' all night,
My hand's wet on the wheel.
There's a voice in my head,
That drives my heel.
It's my baby callin',
Says, "I need you here."
And it's a half past four,
And I'm shifting gear.

An RCMP cruiser pulled me over. As I sat in the back seat, they read my name over the radio... "Whiskey, Indian, Eskimo," etc. I heard the dispatcher reply, "One entry. April 1972. No convictions."

April 1972. Yeah, I remember it. It even made the local news. My old man was pissed when he heard it from the guys working in his shop, who heard it on the radio. But that's a whole other story.

The female RCMP officer was very polite and friendly. The other officer gave me a warning about my speed and let me go.

Somewhere east of Brandon, Manitoba, I stopped for a hitchhiker who was standing in the middle of nowhere. When he opened the door, I caught a whiff of something that I thought, at first, smelled like gasoline.

"Oh! That explains why he's out here in the middle of nowhere. His car broke down. Something wrong with the fuel system and he was trying to fix it."

A second later, I realized it wasn't gasoline. It was some kind of ghastly body odour. Or maybe he'd been skunked? Whatever it was, it was a quality of putridity I had theretofore not believed possible. Worse, if I may say it, than a decaying corpse.

"How far are you going?" he asked.

"Ontario," I replied.

"Great!" he said, "Me too."

Why the fuck didn't I just tell him I was going to the next gas station?

Realizing I'd made a big mistake, I drove with my head halfway out the window, my mind churning as to how I might extricate myself from this unfortunate circumstance without risking a violent confrontation.

As luck would have it, I saw a gas station up ahead. I didn't need to fill up yet, but I saw it as an opportunity to dump this fuming pile of hazardous waste. Then he said the magic words: "I'm going to buy something from the store," and exited the car.

Needless to say, I fucked right off.

In my head, I was back to:

I've been drivin' all night,
My hand's wet on the wheel...

I was cruisin' down the Trans-Canada with just one hand on the wheel. Suddenly, I noticed several deer racing in the opposite direction on the shoulder of the road. This startled me. Reflexively, I grabbed the wheel with my other hand. In doing so, I accidentally tapped the horn. It was such a light tap. It barely evinced a tweet. But one of the deer heard it and made an instant ninety-degree turn, right into the front of my car. By the way its body flopped along the road, it seemed evident to me that it had been killed instantly. Poor thing.

I like deer. They're cute. Without a cell phone — there was no service in that part of Canada at that time — nor did I know who to call, and since the carcass had landed on the shoulder of the road, I figured it would not present a hazard for other drivers.

I pulled over and checked the front of the car for damage. The hood was slightly crumpled, as was the bumper. Opening the hood, I immediately observed that the air breather/cleaner had been torn from the carburetor. I applied some taxi know-how and repaired it with some shoelaces.

Two of my headlights were completely gone and a third was hanging out by its wires. It made me think of someone's eyeball hanging out of its socket. I found one of the eyeballs, excuse me, headlights near the carcass, but not the other one.

Speaking of eyeballs hanging out...

While driving my cab west along King St. one Friday night back in the '90s, I had my scanner tuned to the police frequency. I was around King and Wellington when I heard a cop pipe up in a panicked voice asking dispatch to send an ambulance to the front of the Running Pump, ASAP. "The guy's eye is hanging right out," he cried.

A few seconds later, I drove past the Running Pump and saw a guy laying on his back, grabbing his face and wildly kicking his legs around... as if that would help. I assumed this was the guy with the vision impairment. Gross!

I later heard that he had become embroiled in an altercation with a man and a woman and that she had stomped his face with the heel of her stiletto shoe.

Just another night picking up strangers in a car.

Having completed the rudimentary repairs, I was back on the road hoping to find another gas station with a replacement headlight for the missing one. After driving about fifty miles or so, I found a gas station and, luckily, they had the part I needed. While installing this new headlight, I made a startling discovery. My front licence plate was missing and I was quite sure where I might find it. I turned around and drove back the fifty or so miles to the scene of the accident. Sure enough, my plate was sitting right there on the road.

While thinking about my encounter with the smelly guy, I came to the inescapable conclusion that the reason he was hitchhiking along the Trans-Canada Highway in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was not due to car trouble. It was because he couldn't stand the smell when the last guy who picked him up puked in the car, so the hitcher told the driver to pull over and let him out.

It Wasn't Over

Not wishing to endure that long, boring trip across Ontario, I decided to go through the States.

The vibrations were getting worse. Their intensity would fluctuate. Sometimes it resembled a mild buzz. At other times, the whole car would shake as if it were in an earthquake. What the hell was causing it? I concluded that it was probably that new/used gas tank I had recently installed. Lazy bastards probably didn't tighten the nuts. Yes. That was it. Minutiae.

As I got closer to Duluth, Minnesota, a new sound introduced itself to my ears.

Something was flapping.

Flap flap flap it went. Flap flap flap. Flap flap flap flap flap flap FUCKING FLAP. Think of making your bicycle sound like a motorcycle with the simple artifice of hockey cards. Only at highway speed.

After an hour or so of this new aggravation, merging with the mild and brain-rattling extreme vibrations of those loose gas tank bolts — creating a true symphony — I decided to pull over and do a quick inspection. I saw the problem immediately. The right rear tire had deep bald spots. And they were deep. A half an inch or so deep. "Oh! I know what that is!" The tire was a retread. The outer layer of tread had been bonded to the original used tire that had worn all of its original tread off. I also noticed one or two pieces of tread were still attached to the "tire" at one side. Bingo! That's the fucking flapper!

Facing reality, as I was occasionally known to do, I decided to buy a new/used tire. Probably a retread.

I drove to Duluth. I recall it was a Sunday and everything was closed. So I found a cheap motel. The next day was Monday, May 26, 1980. Memorial Day.

Having solved my flapping tire problem, for the moment, I was back on the road. On the road again. What a great feeling.

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again
Everybody sing

But then, there was still that vibration. Not a good vibration.

Two and a half hours later, I arrived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Things were going well. Except for that vibration.

The light I had been waiting for turned green, so I took my foot off the brake and stepped on the gas. The car didn't move. Vroom! Vroom! Vroom! proved itself to be no more efficacious than prayer. The car would not move. It's amazing how easy it is to face reality when you really have no other fucking choice. I called a tow truck, somehow. Probably found a phone booth somewhere, in a part of town where some lunatic had not ripped the telephone book off and taken it home with him for study purposes. I guess no garages were open in Eau Claire that Memorial Day, because I had to find another cheap motel and spend more of my diminishing supply of cash on something that was worth so much less to me than a case of beer and a pack of Camels.

The next day I learned the source of the problem at a garage. My driveshaft had fallen off. Who ever heard of a driveshaft falling off? Well, it does happen. The front U-joint was worn out. He replaced it. I paid him more of my beer money. And I was back on the road. It wasn't until decades later that it suddenly hit me. What if that driveshaft had fallen off when I was doing 70 MPH down the highway? The car could have flipped over. I could have spent the night in a hospital, or a mortuary, instead of a cheap motel.

The rest of my trip back to Hamilton was uneventful. Other than the fact that every time I stopped to fill up, or buy something to eat, the car wouldn't start. Booster cables wouldn't work. Nothing would work. I would have to wait until the engine cooled down to ambient temperature before it would grace me with a start.

And on it went.

I finally parked that car at my old man's farm in Castorville. I never drove it again.

There is a happy ending to my story.

In 1981 I bought a brand-new used 1972 BUICK SKYLARK for another $350 and drove it all over the place for eight months, before the engine cracked in the winter because of the hole in the radiator, which I had filled with water because — why waste money on rad coolant when it all leaks out? It was worth it.

An Obvious Grifter

I am glad I stopped supporting Tim Horton's

Two years ago, I bought at least one Tim medium coffee daily. Whenever I got in my car and drove somewhere, my first stop was always a Tim Horton's.

Then it hit me. I wasn't even enjoying it. I was simply going through the motions of a mindless ritual. I also performed a rough calculation. At ~$2.00 per day, I was giving Horton's about $730 per year. That's a significant portion of my annual income. When I drove a cab at least five days per week, I would usually buy about three Tim coffees per shift. That's $6 per shift, $30 per week, and $1,560 per year, not counting those I bought in my hypnotic state when not driving a cab. Once I put some numbers around my irrational coffee habit, it was easy to stop the habit dead. Now I barely purchase one Tim coffee per month; usually in unique circumstances - like the odd reunion with some of my high school buds. As an added bonus, I no longer have to endure the aggravation of waiting in a line, either in the drive-thru or in-store, as some knob-head ahead of me takes half an hour to decide what they want, or to mess with their app-based payment systems, or to gossip with the server. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the diversity angle where sometimes you need to state your order to three different staffers due to language barriers. One time, the language barrier was so severe they had to put me on the phone with some official from the United Nations. (Just kidding, though that might also explain some of the delays in the lineups.)

All in all, I am glad I stopped supporting Tim Horton's.