Growing St. John's means big city crime, taxis may need to change
Two taxi drivers were assaulted in separate incidents over the weekend in St. John's, and one cabbie says it may be time to change safety regulations to protect drivers.
Doug McCarthy, who drives for Jiffy Cabs, said the city continues to grow, and that means there are different and bigger types of crime happening.
"Unfortunately, St. John's is becoming a metropolitan city and with metropolitan city comes metropolitan crime," said McCarthy.
"How we deal with it as an industry is something that the owners and the operators and city hall and workers compensation and occupational health and safety, we're all going to have to sit down and discuss."
McCarthy said when the driver realized one of the passengers was still carrying open alcohol, he pulled the cab over and told the passenger to get rid of it. Instead, the passenger sprayed alcohol all over the driver and car.
"The public have to understand that as taxi drivers, we are required to comply with the law. The law says no open alcohol in the vehicle, therefore we as drivers are required to enforce that passengers do not bring open alcohol into the vehicle — same as we're not allowed to let passengers smoke in the vehicle," he said.
No clear answer
He added that there isn't a large number of serious and violent incidents reported by cab drivers in the city; rather, McCarthy said it's a few people making lives of drivers hard, and a higher number of verbally abusive passengers.
McCarthy added he's never been physically assaulted by a passenger, but there was an incident when a passenger said he has a gun and would shoot McCarthy if he didn't do as the passenger said.
According to McCarthy, there's a need for more discussion about driver safety, but he's not sure partitions on cabs is the best solution.
"I'm still out to lunch on that one. I've been in cities where the barriers have been in place and I've been in cities where there has been no barrier. In the taxis with the barrier there's a lot of interpersonal relationship lost between the passenger and the driver, you feel more like sitting in the back of a police car," he said.
"Perhaps video cameras, security cameras inside the car might be a deterrent, but I think the big thing is education. The public has to be educated to the fact that we're there to provide a service and we're trying to provide it to the best of our abilities and as quickly as possible."
McCarthy added while there are some reported incidents of cab drivers being abused by passengers, the majority go unreported.