Not too long ago, I was stopped at a red light after making an illegal though harmless U-turn. I happened to make eye contact with a cab driver stopped beside me. He rolled his eyes and gestured both hands at me with his palms up. Translation: “What are you doing, you blind idiot?” A second later, he broke into a big smile. I had to smile to.
Most people assume New York City taxi drivers would regularly run over pedicabs if there weren’t so many pesky laws about assault and murder. Pedicabs are competition after all and they’re an obstacle to driving everywhere like a getaway car.
However, in my experience, NY cab drivers are surprisingly nice. They rarely honk at pedicabs. If the traffic is bad and a pedicab is stuck behind an illegally parked car, they’ll often wave the pedicab in front of them. At red lights, they sometimes chat about business and even joke with us. Yes, I’ve had problems but very few considering their rather low reputation among the general population who live in fear of them like peasants near a dragon's lair.
In Edinburgh, the cab drivers are quite simply a miserable bunch of "meanies". It’s easy to drive around a pedicab, particularly at night when the streets are mostly empty. Yet they’ll hit their horns behind us like a pedicab is a cow relaxing in the middle of the road. They’ll shout insults out the windows as they drive past. Often they drive uncomfortably close.
Is there a different type of taxi driver in Edinburgh then? Maybe. Most drivers seem to be locals in Edinburgh where New York Taxi drivers come from all over the world. Many NY drivers are from poor countries where rickshaw drivers make barely enough to eat and are practically a symbol of poverty. To see them in the rich and technologically advanced west is surprising and amusing to them.
However, the real difference is the traffic. Edinburgh taxicabs can do whatever they want and then escape. If taxi drivers in New York that don't like pedicabs display similar antisocial behavior, they are likely to be caught at a traffic light a minute later by an irate pedicab driver. Maybe the cab driver’s rear view mirror will be pushed in or broken. Maybe the car will be scratched. Maybe the pedicab driver will spit on them. Maybe there will be a fight and the taxi driver will have to waste time dealing with the police. It’s so much easier just to be civil.
That’s your lesson for today, which you can apply to the rest of life.