Getting a Legal Lift After a Taxi Nightmare

If you have an unpleasant experience in a taxicab, your options differ from one city to the next. While New York has one of the more intricate systems for resolving grievances, other communities also offer relief.

In Los Angeles, consumers can call the Department of Transportation at (213) 485-2758 to register complaints ranging from over-charging to reckless driving. The city receives between 3,000 and 4,000 such complaints a year.

“We have clear taxicab rules, and if they’re violated, the driver can be suspended,” investigator Donald Mansion says. If a complaint is deemed legitimate--about a thousand are each year--a hearing in which consumers participate may be scheduled.

Los Angeles has about 5,000 licensed drivers, and one of the lowest ratios of cabs per 1,000 citizens for a large American city, according to the International Taxicab and Livery Assn.

After New York, the second-largest concentration is in Atlanta, where a complaint system similar to Los Angeles’ exists.

“We only look at about 200 complaints a year, which doesn’t sound like a lot,” says Sam Rembert, who works in Atlanta’s Vehicles for Hire Bureau.

“But we give people the chance to be heard, to confront the drivers.”

Atlanta licenses about 3,000 hackers, and they’re required to defend themselves before a mayoral commission when citizens file complaints, he adds.

New Orleans, which ranks third behind Atlanta, reviews several hundred complaints a year, says Orias Buckner, who works with the city’s taxi bureau. Many complaints about the city’s 1,640 cabbies are filed by tourists, who don’t always have the ability to follow up their cases.

“When you have an out-of-town person who gets overcharged, he may only realize it too late, when he’s ready to go home,” Buckner says. “We might get a phone call, but the driver can get away scot-free, because these people aren’t going to come back here. It’s a concern, but what can you do?”

There are similar problems with tourists in Boston, which has 6,000 licensed cabbies. But investigators are constantly weeding out minor infractions from the about 3,100 complaints lodged yearly.

“If we hear something like, ‘The cabby cut me off and then gave me the finger,’ we’ll give the guy a slap on the wrist and tell him to watch it,” says Officer David Bent, with the police department’s Hackney-Carriage unit. Other violations, such as refusing to take people where they want to go, are dealt with more sternly.

In Boston, a third violation of that rule can lead to the permanent revocation of a cabby’s license. Hearings are held before such action is taken, with both sides presenting witnesses and hiring attorneys.

“If somebody says they were cheated out of 20 cents, we’re not going to get too excited,” Bent says. “But if some driver won’t go to an area for (racial) reasons, we’ll get involved. There’s only so much you can regulate.”