What would a taxi be without its driver? Just another car stuck in traffic or giving way to you. It is only when people are at the wheel that a taxi becomes a “daily news” studio, a rolling therapist’s couch or a speed-dating bar. Depending on the agenda of the chauffeur, sometimes also of the passenger.
Jim Jarmusch staged five such encounters in his wonderful anthology film “Night on Earth”. They are sometimes ruthless, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes both at the same time – Armin Mueller-Stahl as a GDR refugee who gets lost in his taxi to Brooklyn. Roberto Benigni, who maneuvers a priest into a heart attack through his driving style and his confession… In Luc Besson’s action film “The Fifth Element”, Bruce Willis can only save the world because he really gets the most out of his taxi.
The nimbus of taxis also stems from the fact that they are not freely available. If you need one, there probably isn’t one available right now. The Neue Deutsche Welle band DÖF sang about such a tragedy in their hit “Taxi”: In it, a woman calls her lover, the coast is clear, her husband is just out the door, so he can come by quickly. He calls a taxi, then stands in the cold “waiting for a taxi, but it doesn’t come, doesn’t come, doesn’t come”. Although the woman at the taxi dispatcher promises: “Car 734 will be here in three minutes.”
Of course, this trade has long since been fully digitized and is therefore much more reliable. Especially in the Silicon Valley capital of San Francisco, no one can babble about anything in a taxi company, and you are not dependent on the whims and local knowledge of the chauffeur. At least at night. Then there are driverless taxis in the city. If you order such a robotaxi, it will come promptly. And then another. And one more thing. A total of six of these self-driving taxis recently turned up at the same place – and then blocked the road there. Some were eventually guided away by radio, others had to be driven away by company employees.
Not getting anywhere even though there are enough taxis is even more stupid than not being able to find one. And when all the robo-cars have finally unraveled themselves, there is no one inside to complain to. You can take the subway there.