Cabbie Rage: Ugly Exchange Between Fare, Driver Caught On Video
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Yellow cabs are supposed to take you wherever you want to go in the five boroughs, day or night.
But in the case you're about to see, when a passenger asked to go from Manhattan to Brooklyn, things got ugly -- and it was all caught on camera, reports CBS 2's Pablo Guzman.
If a cab driver has ever refused to take you to where you wanted to go odds are your story is not as crazy as this one.
The young man who made the video said he was on the Lower East Side on Saturday at about 1:30 a.m. when a cab driver refused to take him to Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Things got nasty in a hurry. The video appears to show the driver attempting to throw a punch.
Guzman talked to the young man, but he was nervous about going on camera. However, Taxi & Limousine Commission Deputy Commissioner Ashwini Chhabra confirmed his people are investigating his complaint.
"We have received a complaint. It was made via the Web, 311.com. We received the complaint this morning and we are investigating," Chhabra said.
New Yorkers knew what the young man went been through.
"Any true New Yorkers knows you have to get in the cab first before you tell them where you are going," one man said.
"It's gotten to the point where I just jump in as fast as I can because I think that the car driver, taxi driver is going to turn me down," another man said.
One cab driver told Guzman they make money at times like the evening rush and they don't want to leave Midtown. The trick, as the driver put it, is to hit your off-duty light before someone gets in the cab.
"There are all kinds of tricks and work-arounds to our rules. Something like that, we would investigate that," Chhabra said.
The TLC is trying to locate the driver on the video. It wants to hear his version of it.
The TLC said if you can, file a complaint online and even have a hearing over the phone.
Has something like this ever happened to you? Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below.
