Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Green cabs

Why not pay less for a cabbie who doesn't know the way?
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Learner taxi drivers in the UK trundle around on mopeds for years, earning nothing, before qualifying as black cab drivers. Why not have green cabs, however, for learner cabbies. There would have to be some basic vetting procedure before becoming a green cab driver, but this would be minimal [surliness and the ability to fib about having picked up famous people would, I suppose, still be obligatory]. Anyway, if you know the way to where you want to be, you jump in a green cab, direct the driver, and pay perhaps 50 per cent of what the fee would have been in a black cab. This way the driver learns and you, of course, get a good deal. Alternatively, if the driver is learning a new route to, say, Bogton Wharf, that destination would be shown on a large LED screen on top of the taxi. If that happens to be where a pedestrian wants to go, they hail the cab and hop in. Again, if the passenger knows the route and can help the driver by perhaps also pointing things out along the way like "that's St Onan's Hospital on the left" etc s/he likewise gets a discount. Apologies, of course, if such a scheme already exists...
bbeasleymurray, Apr 19 2005

big-brained black cabbies http://news.bbc.co....sci/tech/677202.stm
[FarmerJohn, Apr 19 2005]

(?) Fred Housego http://www.thebubbl...ntry=Fred%20Housego
[po, Apr 19 2005]

[link]






       Apart from the LED screen, this is how cabs are everywhere in UK except London.
angel, Apr 19 2005
  

       black cabs come in all colours these days.
po, Apr 19 2005
  

       But 'Black Cab' (with implied capital letters, even though the car itself may be yellow) indicates a driver who has done the knowledge and is licensed by the Met, rather than Joe Slob in his mate's Mondeo.
angel, Apr 19 2005
  

       his mate's uninsured Mondeo. quite!
po, Apr 19 2005
  

       I've been in at least one Black Cab where the driver was reading the route off of a GPS unit as he went along. So I don't think the knowledge is what it once was. At least not outside London.
Bronzewing, Jan 19 2006
  
      
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