NY Times: Taxis Are Safe … In Other News, Cab Injures Five on 49th

I'll admit this: every time I nearly get hit on the street, it's a commercial van, SUV, or minivan -- never a taxi. Still, I never feel safe walking anywhere near a cab in this town. New York taxis drive the way you might expect a NASCAR racer to drive if he was drunk off the track: shockingly competent for how reckless it looks. Today, timed nicely with the news that a cab mowed down five people on 49th and Madison, was this New York Times story: That Wild Taxi Ride Is Safer Than You Think, a Study Says.

The study, the Times reports, says that "taxi and livery-cab drivers have crash rates one-third lower than drivers of other vehicles."

But bikes aren't safe from cabs: "The study concluded that bicycles are about twice as likely to collide with a cab than other vehicles, a danger that experts attribute to the risks of "dooring," in which passengers in parked cabs throw their doors open in front of oncoming bikes."

The cabbie that writes one of my favorite blogs -- New York Hack, was pleased. She dedicated her post More Vindication to "all the haters out there who love to generalize and say all cabbies drive like shit."

Taxi blogs are a bona fide genre: here's link to a Scottish blogger who tracks work-related blogs, including those of the taxi persuasion. He doesn't list London Cabby though. These are all fascinating reading.