Cabbies Risk Death Daily in N.Y. Jungle Under Siege : Crime: Hours are long and the mortality rate high. So far this year, 32 taxi drivers have been killed by armed robbers posing as customers.

Stroking a jagged, swollen scar on his neck, cabbie Francisco Atizol remembers picking up a well-dressed, respectable-looking woman as a fare.

He offered her a cigarette; she responded by slitting his throat and stealing his cab and his money. Atizol is lucky to be alive: 32 fellow city cabbies have not been so fortunate this year.

Most of the victims have been killed by armed robbers posing as customers, police said. Last year, the death toll hit a record 45, a 35% jump from 1991.

“This is the most dangerous job in the city and no one besides the drivers seems to care,” said Kenny Arthur, spokesman for Affiliated Livery Drivers and Owners, a trade association.

A special police task force has increased both uniformed and plainclothes patrols in dangerous neighborhoods in the South Bronx, where Atizol was attacked, and east Brooklyn, where cab bandits thrive.

The body of the latest victim, Altaf Quershi, 27, of Brooklyn was found on a recent Saturday morning in the front seat of his yellow cab. The Pakistani immigrant had been shot to death.

The carnage far exceeds that of other large cities like Chicago and Miami, where officials don’t even bother to keep separate crime statistics for cabbies and say fatal assaults on them are rare.

The New York death toll could have been worse: The number of reported cabbie robberies has more than doubled in 10 years, to 3,675 in 1992. Hundreds more go unreported, cabbies say.

This summer, a driver traveling from Kennedy International Airport to Manhattan was shot dead as three Australians just off an airliner cowered in the back seat.

In June, a driver in Queens, feeling a gun barrel against his neck, thwarted the robbery by deliberately ramming two parked police cars.

Cabbies typically lose less than $100 in cash and maybe their car in a robbery. Almost all of those who die are found in their cabs, slumped over the steering wheels, their assailants long gone.

From the time taxis first began lining up in front of the Plaza Hotel in 1907, the trade attracted immigrants and other new arrivals to the city, at first mainly Italians, Irish and Eastern European Jews.

After World War II, it was Puerto Ricans, then Koreans and Dominicans, then Haitians and, most recently, Indians and Africans.

As the cabbie population grew and diversified, so did the industry. Working the streets today are 11,787 Yellow Cabs, about 30,000 radio-dispatched livery cars and 5,000 to 9,000 unlicensed “gypsy” cabs.

The livery and gypsy cabbies, often new arrivals with little driving experience, no street smarts and poor English, are ready prey for armed thieves. Driving late at night in poor neighborhoods becomes a game of passenger roulette: Pick up the wrong one and pay with your earnings--or your life.

Of the 32 killings thus far this year, 27 were livery or gypsy cab drivers.

Police caught Atizol’s attacker, but not without a dramatic assist from other drivers with Dykeman Car Service. The drivers heard their fellow cabbie put out a radio call for help before the woman took his night’s earnings--about $30--and dumped the bleeding driver from his car. More than 30 cabs responded, racing after the woman.

A high-speed, half-hour chase ended when two cabs blocked off a street. The drivers yanked the woman out of Atizol’s cab; one of them punched her twice before the police showed up.

Atizol was back at work the next day--with 22 stitches in his neck and a rusty 5-iron for future protection tucked under a tattered velour seat matted with blood.