It's a true joy getting into a clean, odor-free taxi with a driver who puts safety first and knows where he's going. Too bad that experience is as rare as a mastodon on Main Street. Even the shortest fare can be an assault on the senses. But new cabs cut through some of that. These days, you can hail a ride that's less Travis Bickle and more James Bond.
Touchscreens
If the driver doesn't know where to take you, just ask the cab. Fleets in Boston and Chicago have backseat touchscreens and Pentium 4 computers loaded with hotel, restaurant, and theater listings, plus movie showtimes and sports scores. The tech rolls into San Francisco taxis in December; New York cars get outfitted in November 2005 (don't worry, the ad-heavy screens seen in 2002 are history).
Electronic Signs
Taxis have long carried ads - now they flash on LCD and LED screens. A proprietary cellular network not only broadcasts real-time information, but also uses GPS to generate neighborhood-specific ads that change on the fly - in New York City's Chinatown, for example, the cab shills in Chinese.
Robot Dispatch
Cabbies often bribe or kiss up to dispatchers to get big-money trips. That doesn't work when a computer has the job. It assigns rides automatically based on location. The drivers get the fares on PDA-like computers. Newer models, like the iPilot 8000, come with mapping software, so cabbies don't get lost.
Driver's Brain
How do cabbies recall all those directions? Studies show London taxi drivers have enlarged posterior hippocampi (shown at left), the region of the brain associated with geospatial relationships. And Berlin cabbies' brains use less energy while driving - another sign of smarts.
Black Boxes
Fender benders seem to produce an inordinate number of debilitating neck injuries when a cab is involved, and fleet owners often have trouble disproving dicey claims. In Las Vegas, Desert Cab's 163 taxis are rigged with the Witness, an electronic data recorder that tracks the cab's g-force and velocity changes during a collision. Since the boxes were installed in 1999, Desert's average bodily injury claims have fallen 60 percent.
- Noah Shachtman
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