Free Republic

Yeah, he’s talkin’ to you. Robert De Niro will reportedly reprise his iconic “Taxi Driver” role as Travis Bickle in an upcoming Uber ad campaign. The 80-year-old actor will apparently replicate Bickle’s unforgettable line: “You talkin’ to me,” in the series of ads being filmed in London this week, The Sun reported. “He’s going to be Travis Bickle, saying some phrases and playing up to it,” an unnamed source told the outlet. “His previous adverts have shown he has no problem poking fun at himself.” The Oscar-winner has recently taken on several other ad campaigns — a possible consequence of...

A Louisiana taxi driver turned the tables on an armed man who allegedly tried to rob him early Monday morning. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said an unidentified taxi driver in Metairie was in his cab before 1 a.m. on Monday when a suspect armed with a handgun demanded money from the cabbie, NOLA.com reported. Metairie is located less than 10 miles west of New Orleans. The cab driver had his own firearm and shot the suspect multiple times, police said. The suspect, later identified as 23-year-old Gerald Pope, was pronounced dead at the scene, NOLA.com reported. Jefferson Parish Sheriff's...

CHICAGO (NewsNation) — Chicagoans may soon be able to fly over airport traffic on their way downtown. In two years, Chicago will become the debut city for the first commercial electric air taxi route, according to a joint press release by Archer Aviation Inc. and United Airlines. Archer and United announced plans to launch the commercial electric air taxi service on Thursday, saying they chose Chicago because it “is the third most populous city in the United States, a center for business, innovation and investment, and home to United’s headquarters. This makes it a unique city for Archer and United...

DRIVERLESS taxi service Cruise has expanded its San Francisco operational times to daytime hours. This 24-hour availability will be offered to the organization’s employees before expanding to the public. Public San Francisco Cruise customers can currently order Cruise’s transport service from 10:00pm to 5:00am. There are now around 70 active Cruise vehicles in San Francisco, TechCrunch reports. Cruise San Francisco fares require a $5 base fee and $0.90 per mile, plus $0.40 per minute rates. Cruise began charging its passengers fares in June and expanded into most of the San Francisco are

As Uber aggressively pushed into markets around the world, the ride-sharing service lobbied political leaders to relax labor and taxi laws, used a "kill switch'' to thwart regulators and law enforcement, channeled money through Bermuda and other tax havens and considered portraying violence against its drivers as a way to gain public sympathy, according to a report released Sunday. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit network of investigative reporters, scoured internal Uber texts, emails, invoices and other documents to deliver what it called "an unprecedented look into the ways Uber defied taxi laws and upended workers' rights.'' **SNIP**...

Like other Saudi women, Fahda Fahd couldn't legally drive until 2018, but her lime-green Kia is now a route to extra cash as living costs rise in the conservative kingdom. When she's not working full time at a healthcare call centre, the 54-year-old picks up fares in the capital Riyadh from a ride-hailing app exclusively for women. Fahd said her family was supportive of her second job, on two conditions: no long trips or men as passengers. "I decided to work as a taxi driver to earn extra income," said Fahd, wearing a black head covering and an anti-coronavirus face...

While taxi drivers in New York City may have finally "ridden" out the absolute worst effects of enduring the ridesharing boom and the pandemic at the same time, the road to clearer skies still looks dim. That's because, as was pointed out by @JBaksht on Twitter this week, taxi medallions have still plunged 90% over the last decade.The plunge in medallion value came at the same time that Lyft and Uber began to register hundreds of thousands of daily trips in New York City. Prior to the pandemic, Uber had peaked at over 500,000 trips per day, while Lyft was...

A HERO taxi driver thwarted a Remembrance Day bomb tragedy by trapping a suspected terrorist in his cab...

A Missouri taxi company will not provide transportation to people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or are wearing masks. "We don't allow any type of masks in our vehicles," Yo Transportation owner Charlie Bullington told KMOV in an interview. "The second one, we're very against the vaccines, and we do not wish to have people in our vehicle that did the vaccines." Bullington said that, prior to pickup, he verifies that his passengers have not been vaccinated and will be wearing a face covering. The company's website said that it offers rides in Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Montgomery, St. Charles,...

"You wanna pedal dope? Ok. Deal in white slavery? Ok. But if I ever hear the word "accident," I will rip your head off and use it for a radiator cap."

Electric taxis will charge up wirelessly as they wait on the rank as part of a £3.4 million trial, ministers announced today. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the new technology could eventually be used by public drivers of electric cars. Ten taxis in Nottingham will be fitted with the hardware later this year. When they are parked over pads installed in the ground, their batteries will charge automatically. The system recognizes the vehicle and bills the driver for the power. The technology removes the need for cables and fixed charging points. …

Uber (UBER.N) was stripped of its license to carry paying passengers in London on Monday for the second time in just over two years, pending an appeal, over a “pattern of failures” on safety and security. Unauthorized drivers were able to upload their photos to others’ accounts so that, on over 14,000 trips, a driver other than the advertised one picked up passengers, the regulator Transport for London (TfL) said. The ride-hailing firm immediately said it would appeal. The process is likely to include court action and could drag on for months, allowing Uber’s roughly 45,000 drivers in London, one...

NEVER GET IN A TAXI WITH A MUSLIM DRIVER, especially if you’re in India JUNE 2, 2019 BY BARENAKEDISLAM Muslim Taxi Driver in Meerut, India admits to 250 murders of non-Muslims in last four months, which averages out to two murders per day. Hindu Existence (h/t Upananda B) In a shocking confession, a Muslim man arrested on charges of murder has claimed to having killed about 250 people in the past four months, police said on Thursday, adding that the matter was being investigated. The accused, identified only as Salim, is a middle-aged Muslim taxi driver in this Uttar Pradesh...

This is a subject we’ve been tackling here for a while now. With the advent of Uber, Lyft and other gig-economy outfits, a lot of pressure has been put on taxi drivers that don’t deliver a similar quality of service. Part of the resulting economic distress has come from a simple lack of customers, but the problem runs deeper than that. Under the traditional, corrupt system of taxi “medallions,” the municipal government has been able to regulate how many people are able to attempt to earn a living by offering rides. In exchange, they had to pay an increasing amount...

Hi, I am a longtime FReeper and just needed to talk to someone. I will not post and run, but I must say, I am just getting into bed. I had to go to the hospital because I slipped on our hardwood stairs, and my head hit the wall. I had a headache that would not quit, no matter how much ice I put on it. I even took a half of a tramadol that I got a couple of years after I fell on the ice in our rural Canadian driveway; nothing helped. The hospital told me that the...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — For the first time ever, more New Yorkers are using ride service vehicles like Uber than the city’s famed yellow cabs. The New York Times crunched the numbers provided by Uber and found people took an average of 289,000 Uber rides every day in July compared with 277,000 taxi trips.

BROOKLYN (WPVI) -- A woman's body was found in a car after a fiery crash on the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn Friday morning, and authorities say the driver -- believed to be a man she was dating -- hailed a cab in the middle of the highway while she burned to death. The car was found facing eastbound in the westbound lanes between Hamilton Avenue and Prospect Expressway just after 4 a.m. The 2007 Infiniti G35 was fully on fire. When firefighters put out the flames, they found a badly burned woman in the passenger seat. She was pronounced dead...

I picked up a guy a week or two ago who was in his mid 30s that looked a little scruffy, covered in tats and a very wild and woolly beard. He wanted to go to a low-budget, no-name, mom-and-pop motel a few miles away. He looked a little sketchy, but I noticed that he had the eagle and anchor Marine Corps emblem tattooed on his forearm, and I said, “Marine Corps, huh?”He said, “Yes Sir, two tours in Afghanistan.” As I have said before, I always thank a member of our military whenever I encounter them, and I...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Uber is enabling passengers to tip its U.S. drivers with a tap on its ride-hailing app for the first time, part of a push to recast itself as a company with a conscience and a heart. Besides the built-in tipping option announced Tuesday, Uber is giving drivers an opportunity to make more money in other ways too.

Ride-hailing will grow eightfold by then and could be five times the size of the taxi market, justifying the giant valuations, the report said. At $68 billion and $50 billion, respectively, Uber and Didi are the two most highly valued venture-backed companies, according to data firm CB Insights. Central to the growth of this industry, according to Goldman Sachs, is the proliferation of self-driving cars.