90 Fun Facts About Taxi Cab

Which founder of Chicago's Yellow Cab Company later gave his name to a car-rental giant?

John Hertz put his first Yellow Cabs on Chicago's streets in 1915, then bought a car-rental firm and renamed it after himself; he sold his cab interests in 1929.

One disputed etymology traces 'hackney' to the Old French 'haquenée', a word for what?

An ambling horse, a gentle nag for everyday riding, is what haquenée meant; one leading dictionary has the French borrowing the word from English, where it began with the horse pastures of Hackney.

New York made yellow compulsory for its taxis in 1967 to curb what?

Unlicensed cabs were the target: with one compulsory colour, a rider could tell at a glance that a taxi was official and regulated by the city.

Who played Travis Bickle, the 'You talkin' to me?' cabbie of Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver?

Robert De Niro improvised the mirror scene's 'You talkin' to me?', by the screenwriter's own account, and the line now ranks tenth on the American Film Institute's list of great movie quotes.

In which 1997 sci-fi film does Bruce Willis play Korben Dallas, who drives a flying taxi in the 23rd century?

The Fifth Element takes off when Leeloo leaps from a ledge and crashes into Korben's cab; its director, Luc Besson, wrote the French hit Taxi a year later.

Who wrote the screenplay of Taxi Driver, the first of his several scripts for Martin Scorsese?

Paul Schrader wrote it in under a fortnight after weeks spent living in his car, picturing himself as a lonely man shut inside a yellow cab.

What nickname did Walter Bersey's 1897 London electric cabs earn from their noise?

Hummingbirds lasted only two years: the heavy batteries shook themselves and the tyres to pieces, and the cabs were withdrawn in 1899 as the company went into liquidation.

The Daimler Victoria, an early motor cab fitted with a taximeter, began operating in June 1897 in which city?

Stuttgart put Gottlieb Daimler's cab to work in 1897; its taximeter, a German invention that reckoned the fare, is what gave the taxi its name.

What were the horse-drawn cabs for hire of seventeenth-century Paris called, after a saint?

Fiacres were named for Saint Fiacre, whose name marked the premises where Nicolas Sauvage began hiring out carriages; the saint then became the patron of cab drivers.

Who played Alex, the veteran cabbie at the heart of the sitcom Taxi?

Judd Hirsch played Alex, the one driver in the garage who admits cab-driving is his real job; the role won him two Primetime Emmys, in 1981 and 1983.

Trainee London cabbies learning The Knowledge usually ride its routes on what?

A motor scooter with the day's streets clipped up in front of the rider marks out a 'Knowledge boy' or girl; they must learn 320 set runs and some 25,000 streets within six miles of Charing Cross.

Brain scans of London cabbies who had memorised the city's streets found changes in which region?

The hippocampus, the seat of spatial memory, had redistributed its grey matter in drivers who knew the city by heart; the study won Eleanor Maguire an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.

Which two-wheeled London carriage for hire, patented in 1834 by a York architect, needed only a single horse?

The hansom cab put its driver on a high seat behind the passengers, who spoke to him and paid through a hatch in the roof; he worked a lever to release the doors.

On a London black cab, what does a lit TAXI sign on the roof tell you?

It is free for hire when the sign glows, which matters because only black cabs may be hailed on the street; minicabs have to be booked.

Harry Allen founded the New York Taxicab Company in 1907 with gasoline cars imported from which country?

France supplied the cars; Allen started the firm in a fury after being charged five dollars for a short ride, and vowed to charge by the mile instead.

Travis Bickle, the insomniac cabbie of Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver, is a former Marine who served in which war?

The Vietnam War is where Travis served as a Marine before driving nights through a decaying New York; his spiral ends with him turning vigilante.

In taxi jargon, what is the fixed amount added to the fare the moment you get into the cab?

The drop is where the fare starts before the wheels turn; after it, everything is metered by distance and waiting time.

Benny the Cab, a talking cartoon taxi, helps the heroes escape in which 1988 film?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit has Benny whisk Roger and detective Eddie Valiant away from Judge Doom's weasels; Charles Fleischer voiced both the cab and the rabbit.

What legal term covers taxi companies, airlines and railroads because they offer transport to the general public?

Common carriers must serve the general public without discrimination, unlike contract carriers, which may turn customers away; in New York a cab that refuses a street hail is breaking the rules.

New York's 1937 Haas Act capped the number of taxis and created which transferable licence?

Medallions, the transferable licences created by the 1937 freeze, became the scarce asset: the fleet size barely changed for decades, so the licence rather than the car carried the value.

In the sitcom Taxi (1978-83), the drivers work the night shift out of which fictional garage?

The Sunshine Cab Company garage was the drivers' base; most of them treated the night shift as a stopgap while they chased other careers.

Who played Louie De Palma, the caged-in dispatcher who bullies the drivers on the sitcom Taxi?

Danny DeVito won the part by walking into his audition, demanding in unprintable terms to know who wrote the script and throwing it on the table; the creators fell about laughing.

On Taxi, Andy Kaufman's Latka developed a smooth-talking lounge-lizard alter ego who went by what name?

Vic Ferrari was Latka's swaggering alter ego; the writers gave Latka multiple personality disorder so Andy Kaufman could play other characters on the show.

Who played the burnt-out 1960s casualty 'Reverend' Jim Ignatowski on Taxi?

Christopher Lloyd first appeared as a one-off guest, the minister who performs Latka's sham marriage so the mechanic can stay in America, then joined the main cast the following year.

After ABC cancelled Taxi in 1982, which network picked the sitcom up for its fifth and final season?

NBC picked up Taxi for the 1982-83 season after ABC dropped it; for a while it had looked as though a premium cable channel would rescue the show instead.

Who won two Emmys on Taxi as Simka, the wife of Andy Kaufman's Latka?

Carol Kane believes her Yiddish-speaking role in the film Hester Street helped win her the part, since Simka speaks an invented language with a vaguely Eastern European accent.

Who composed 'Angela', the mellow instrumental theme of the sitcom Taxi?

Bob James wrote 'Angela' for a scene in the third episode, 'Blind Date', and the producers liked it so much that it replaced the theme they had planned.

The opening titles of the sitcom Taxi show a Checker cab crossing which East River bridge?

The Queensboro Bridge clip lasts only about fifteen seconds: it was shot as a link between scenes, so the opening titles simply repeat parts of it.

What is the day job of Elaine Nardo, Marilu Henner's part-time cabbie on the sitcom Taxi?

Gallery receptionist is Elaine's foothold in the art world she hopes to rise in; a divorced mother of two, she drives the cab to pay the bills.

Which future co-developer of The Simpsons was one of the four co-creators of the sitcom Taxi?

James L. Brooks and co-creator David Davis took the idea from a 1975 New York magazine article about night-shift cabbies, 'Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet'.

The 1998 French action-comedy Taxi, written by Luc Besson, follows a speed-loving cabbie in which city?

Marseille is the setting: Samy Naceri's cabbie Daniel races his secretly souped-up cab through the city, and the film spawned four sequels plus a 2004 American remake.

Which supermodel made her film debut leading a bank-robbing gang in the 2004 remake Taxi?

Gisele Bündchen played Vanessa, whose gang of Brazilian bank robbers is chased through New York by Queen Latifah's cabbie Belle Williams and Jimmy Fallon's demoted detective.

Which stand-up comedian drove the cab and asked the questions on Discovery's Cash Cab, starting in 2005?

Ben Bailey pulled over and ejected passengers after three wrong answers; Cash Cab won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Game Show three years running.

On which network did the hidden-camera series Taxicab Confessions air from 1995 to 2006?

HBO's Taxicab Confessions used hidden cameras; passengers only learned they had been filmed at the end of the ride, when they were asked to sign a waiver.

In Michael Mann's Collateral (2004), who plays Max, the LA cabbie forced to drive Tom Cruise's silver-haired hitman around all night?

Jamie Foxx took a role that Adam Sandler had been in talks to play, opposite Russell Crowe as the hitman, before Michael Mann and Tom Cruise came aboard.

Who plays Corky, the Los Angeles cabbie in Jim Jarmusch's taxi film Night on Earth?

Winona Ryder's cabbie turns down a casting agent's offer of a film part because she would rather become a mechanic; the other rides unfold the same night in New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki.

Which prize did Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver win at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival?

The Palme d'Or came from a jury led by Tennessee Williams, but the film's four Oscar nominations brought no wins, and Best Picture went to Rocky.

Toyota's JPN Taxi was developed to meet Japan's universal-design goals ahead of which event?

The 2020 Summer Olympics set the deadline: Toyota shaped the JPN Taxi to be as instantly recognisable as London's black cab, and the Tokyo Games then slipped a year to 2021.

What colour are the Hong Kong taxis that serve Lantau Island?

Lantau taxis are blue; red cabs cover Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, green ones the New Territories, and only 75 of the roughly 18,000 licensed taxis are blue.

A 2002 Mexico City decree doomed the Beetle taxis by refusing permits to cars with what feature?

Only two doors was the fatal flaw: Mexico City's 2002 decree stopped licensing such cars as taxis, pushing drivers to four-door saloons and ending the 'Vocho' era as the city's standard cab.

Which original name did Uber shorten after complaints from San Francisco's taxi operators?

UberCab was the name until San Francisco's taxi trade objected; Garrett Camp had the idea after he and Travis Kalanick spent $800 on a private driver one New Year's Eve.

The price of a New York City yellow-cab licence peaked in 2014 at more than which figure?

Licences sold for over $1 million at the 2013-14 peak; ride-hailing then crushed the market, and by 2018 one could be had for under $200,000.

The tight turning circle required of black cabs is traditionally attributed to the roundabout at which hotel?

The Savoy's forecourt has a small roundabout that a cab must get round in one sweep; Savoy Court is also a British oddity, a street where vehicles must drive on the right.

Checker cabs, long dominant on American streets, were built in which Michigan city?

Kalamazoo built Checker cabs from 1923 until the last one in 1982; the firm then lived on for decades making parts for other carmakers before going bankrupt in 2009.

Bajaj Auto, a major maker of three-wheeled tuk-tuk auto rickshaws, is based in which country?

India is home to Bajaj Auto; 'tuk-tuk', the Thai name for such three-wheelers, simply imitates the putter of the engine.

Before New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission was created in 1971, which body regulated the city's cabs?

The Police Department ran cab licensing through its Hack Bureau from the 1920s, 'hack' being short for hackney, until Mayor John Lindsay signed the commission into being.

Which automaker's NV200 van won New York City's 'Taxi of Tomorrow' competition?

Nissan's NV200 beat the other two finalists, from Ford and Karsan, for a ten-year exclusive contract; all three designs were small vans, a break from the traditional saloon cab.

The FX4, London's classic black cab from 1958 to 1997, was built by Carbodies in which English city?

Coventry's Carbodies built more than 75,000 FX4s over 39 years, and the cab outlived the Austin badge it was launched under; its electric successor is still made just outside the city.

New York's 'boro taxis', launched in 2013 to pick up outside Manhattan's core, are painted what colour?

Apple green cabs exist because a GPS study found 95% of yellow-taxi pick-ups were in Manhattan below 96th Street or at the airports, leaving the other boroughs short of legal street hails.

In the 2000 census, which country was the most common birthplace of New York City taxi drivers?

Bangladesh was the most common birthplace in the 2000 census; drivers reported 167 different countries of birth, and 84% were immigrants, up from 38% in 1980.

How did New York sell its first new taxi licences in almost sixty years in 1996?

By public auction: the fleet had been frozen since 1937, when a licence cost $10, and decades of scarcity had turned the permits into prized investments.

On the sitcom Taxi, Tony Danza's Tony Banta is trying to make it as what?

Tony Banta is a boxer with a losing record who drives a cab between bouts; Danza himself had been a professional boxer before he was cast.

The commissioners who licensed London's hackney coaches from 1662 were named after which address?

Scotland Yard lent its name to the commissioners created by the 1662 Act, which capped London's hackney coaches at 400; the police made the address famous only after 1829.

Since January 2018, what must every newly licensed London taxi be?

Zero-emission capable cabs arrived just in time: the plug-in LEVC TX launched weeks before the rule took effect, and by December 2023 more than half of London's 14,690 licensed taxis qualified.

The 'taxicab number' 1729 gets its name from a cab ride taken to visit which Indian mathematician in hospital?

Srinivasa Ramanujan heard his visitor call the cab's number, 1729, rather dull, and replied at once that it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways.

Which French singer was just 14 when her 1987 single 'Joe le taxi' became an international hit?

Vanessa Paradis was singing about a real cabbie: Joe was Maria José Leão dos Santos, a Portuguese woman who drove a Paris taxi by night.

The 'cab' in taxicab is short for cabriolet, a carriage named from French for what?

Cabriolet comes from the French cabrioler, 'to leap', after the light two-wheeled carriage's bouncing ride; its clipped form 'cab' was joined to 'taxi' to make 'taxicab'.

The Thurn and Taxis family, falsely credited with the word 'taxi', ran which kind of business?

Postal service made the Thurn and Taxis fortune as the Holy Roman Empire's couriers for centuries; 'taxi' is really short for taximeter, a German coinage built on the Latin taxa, a charge.

Thornton Blackburn, founder of Toronto's first cab service in 1837, had earlier been what?

An escaped slave from Kentucky, Blackburn was recaptured in Detroit in 1833, sparking riots in which a crowd freed him; he reached Canada and built the red-and-yellow horse cab 'The City'.

Albert Rockwell's taxicabs, among America's earliest home-built cabs, came from Bristol, now ESPN's home, in which state?

Connecticut's Bristol was home to Rockwell's New Departure company, which began by making bells and ended up a division of General Motors; his cab designer, Fred Moskovics, had worked at Daimler.

Who suggested Albert Rockwell give his Bristol-built taxicabs their eye-catching colour?

His wife, Nettie, is credited with the choice, though accounts differ on whether she simply liked yellow or wanted the cabs seen from afar; either way the Rockwell cab became the Yellow Taxicab.

Which ride-hailing giant took over Uber's China business in 2016?

Didi swallowed its biggest home rival, Kuaidi, in 2015 and Uber China a year later, after a price war that had cost Uber about $2 billion; Uber's side took a stake in the merged firm.

At which Paris landmark did the 1914 Marne taxis gather before heading to the front?

Les Invalides was the muster point: some 600 cabs set off by night in two convoys, and each then carried five soldiers towards the battle.

The French treasury later settled the Marne taxis' bill according to what?

Their meters ran the whole way under city rules, and the bill came to about 70,000 francs, though the lift moved only a few thousand of the army's men.

The Paris cab remembered as the 'Taxi de la Marne' was a model from which French carmaker?

Renault's Type AG was the firm's first taxi, and it took the nickname after about 600 Paris cabs were commandeered in September 1914 to carry soldiers to the front, 50 km away.

After the 1974 pub bombings, taxis ferried the injured to hospital in which British city?

Birmingham's cabbies were asked to carry the lightly injured to hospital on 21 November 1974, after bombs in the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town killed 21 people and injured 182.

Which car was Mumbai's classic black-and-yellow 'kaali-peeli' taxi for decades?

The Premier Padmini, a Fiat design built under licence in Mumbai until 2001, was finally forced off the road in October 2023 by a rule banning cabs more than 20 years old.

In US cab slang, the upfront sum a driver pays to lease a taxi for a shift is called what?

The nut is old American slang for a venture's overhead: gamblers used it by 1909, and by 1933 cabbies spoke of making the nut, the rental owed each night to the cab's owner.

Grid-based 'taxicab geometry' is also named after which New York borough?

Manhattan distance adds the blocks across to the blocks up, the only way a cab can travel on a street grid; the idea goes back to the mathematician Hermann Minkowski in the 19th century.

Jacob German, driving an electric cab in 1899, is remembered as America's first motorist arrested for what?

Speeding, at about 12 mph, got German arrested in New York on 20 May 1899; the first paper speeding ticket came only in 1904, to Harry Myers of Dayton, Ohio.

Henry Bliss, America's first recorded motor fatality in 1899, was stepping off what when a cab struck him?

A streetcar had just set Bliss down at Central Park West and 74th Street when the electric cab hit him; its driver was charged with manslaughter and acquitted.

New York yellow cabs charge a flat fare, not the meter, between Manhattan and which airport?

JFK trips to or from Manhattan cost a flat $70, up from $52 before the end of 2022, while LaGuardia runs stay on the meter with a $5 surcharge.

Which Chinese carmaker owns LEVC, the company that builds London's electric black cabs?

Geely first bought into the cab maker's struggling parent, then rescued the business after it collapsed in 2012; the group's other marques include Volvo, Lotus and Polestar.

Checker founder Morris Markin got rich in World War I supplying the US Army with what?

Markin, a Russian immigrant clothier in Chicago, won a wartime contract to make army uniforms; he got into cabs by calling in a $15,000 loan to a body maker that could not repay him.

In 1999 TV Guide named which Taxi character the greatest TV character of all time?

Louie De Palma, a tyrant who rules the garage from a wire cage, beat every hero on the list; Taxi placed a second character too, Reverend Jim at number 32.

On Taxi, Jim took the surname Ignatowski believing it was what, spelt backwards?

Jim Caldwell renamed himself Ignatowski thinking it was 'Star Child' backwards; he had been a diligent Harvard student with a wealthy father until one drug-laced brownie sent him on his long downward spiral.

Whose Taxi Driver score was his last, completed on the eve of his death in December 1975?

Bernard Herrmann, the composer of Psycho, finished the score and was dead within a day; Scorsese had wanted nobody else for the job and dedicated the film to his memory.

To avoid an X rating for Taxi Driver's climactic shootout, what did Scorsese do?

Scorsese desaturated the colours of the shootout so the blood read as muted; that earned an R, and cinematographer Michael Chapman later regretted it because no print with the original colours survives.

John Hinckley Jr. said his 1981 attack on Reagan was to impress which Taxi Driver star?

Hinckley had become obsessed with Jodie Foster after repeatedly watching Taxi Driver, and his lawyers showed the film to the jury during his 1982 trial, which ended in a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Joni Mitchell says she wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on her first trip to where?

On her first trip to Hawaii, Mitchell drew back her hotel curtains to see green mountains and then a parking lot 'as far as the eye could see', and sat down to write the song.

Harry Chapin's 'Taxi' made history where when its host brought him back the next night?

Johnny Carson brought Chapin back to The Tonight Show the following night, a first for the show, after viewers' calls and telegrams; 'Taxi' peaked at No. 24 on the Hot 100 in 1972.

The Cash Cab game-show franchise originated in which country?

The United Kingdom saw it first, on ITV in June 2005 with John Moody at the wheel; the original ran barely a year, while the American version launched that year and was still being made in the 2010s.

Jafar Panahi's 2015 docufiction Taxi won the top prize at which film festival?

Taxi took the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival; banned from filmmaking and travel by Iran since 2010, Panahi posed as a share-taxi driver, and his niece Hana Saeidi collected the prize.

'Rickshaw' comes from the Japanese 'jinrikisha', which literally means what?

Jinrikisha is literally 'human-powered vehicle' (jin, riki, sha); the cart was most likely invented in 1869 after Japan lifted its Tokugawa-era ban on wheeled vehicles.

The Philippine 'jeepney' is usually explained as a blend of 'jeep' and which other word?

Jitney, an old American word for a cheap shared cab, supplied the ending; surplus US Army jeeps left behind after 1945 became the template for Manila's decorated minibuses.

The matatu, a decorated minibus taxi, is a fixture of which country?

Kenya's matatus carry most of Nairobi's commuters; one explanation of the name is that the fare was once three ten-cent coins, though the origin is not agreed.

Cuba's three-wheeled 'cocotaxi' takes its name from its body's resemblance to what?

A half coconut is what its round yellow fibreglass shell resembles; the three-wheelers reached Havana in the late 1990s, and the British and Canadian governments both warn tourists that they are unsafe.

Which colour is the nationwide standard for German taxis, though some states now allow others?

Light ivory, or Hellelfenbein, is still prescribed nationwide, but the rules let states grant exemptions, and several, among them Baden-Württemberg and Lower Saxony, have freed the colour.

What did early Lyft drivers attach to the front of their cars as a marketing gimmick?

Pink furry moustaches on the front of the car marked a Lyft, whose riders were also urged to sit up front and fist-bump the driver; a small glowing dashboard 'glowstache' replaced them in 2015.

Which motoring show declared the Hindustan Ambassador the best taxi in the world?

Top Gear crowned the Ambassador the world's best taxi although the design was by then over half a century old: it was built from 1957 to 2014 on the bones of the Morris Oxford Series III.