IN most of the world's large cities, taxi services evolve to reflect
something of the local atmosphere. In Amsterdam, where violent films are
enjoyed for their laughter value, the hobby of most taxi drivers is to
watch the terrified faces of passengers in the rear mirror. In Cairo,
where cabs decline to change direction before reaching the city
boundaries, drivers try to sell their passengers a street map in order
to indicate their destination. In New York, most cabbies try to complete
the transaction in two grunts.
In London, their Cockney counterparts practise political monologues.
It is only in France, however, where the ''taximetre'' was first fitted
to horse carriages, and ''cabriolet'' was used to describe the ''little
leap'' from one spot to another, that the taxi driver has developed the
full misanthropic potential of his calling. Ah . . . who has not
suffered a baleful glare and Gallic insult for wanting to travel less
than a kilometre? Even struggling with luggage, many visitors to the
French capital brave the Metro rush-hour rather than be told by a surly
cabbie to put the bags on the back seat themselves.
All this is in the proud tradition of Parisian rudeness, of course,
and it will be interesting to see if a new training course aimed at
improving the standard of the city's taxis is effective. After 440 hours
of instruction in road craft, and the ''rudiments of making welcome'',
like saying ''Thank you'' for tips in foreign languages, drivers will
receive a diploma which will entitle them to charge a minimum of 30
francs (#3), no matter how short the trip. It is the fare that seems to
worry both drivers and passengers in any part of the world. The US
comedienne Carol Burnett once caught her coat getting out of a New York
taxi door, and had to run alongside the cab until an observant
pedestrian hailed it. ''Are you all right?'' the driver asked. ''Yes,''
she gasped. ''But how much more do I owe you?''
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