You might know this: cab drivers in Bucharest won’t let you wear your seatbelt. The second they smell your intention to reach for the buckle, they go “hey, you don’t need that”. A logical person may ask “hmm yeah but isn’t it illegal to drive around without it?” I’ve tried this a number of times and the answer is always “not in a taxi”. Now my first question is: when was this amendment voted? I mean, I know we have many senators with cab driver brains, but still, is this official?
I’m writing this because last night I had to take a cab and choice was very limited, so my ride had this ugly, old weirdo gipsy driver. When I pulled the seatbelt, he just grabbed my hand, and with a whiny voice started complaining about how everybody insists on the stupid belt. I did manage to fasten it, though, and ignored the guy’s desperate grabs and complaints. Still it felt pretty disgusting.
Very often you get into the cab and pull the belt, only to discover that you have no socket to stick it into: the driver has sawn it off. You can almost see the inner grin of the cabbie, happy there beside you, while his miniature brain goes “YeeeHaaaa - Gotcha!!! No tengo belt, bwaahahahahhaa!!!” These are the guys who watch Pimp My Ride, and actually take it to the next level. They know the trade: they are the tuning gurus. So while they’re at it glueing playoboy cutouts onto the dashboard and hanging huge fluffy dice above the steering wheel, they grab a saw and remove the seatbelt buckles. Nothing says ‘courage’ better than this. Needless to say I have to see ONE driver who actually wears his seatbelt.
Apparently cabs in Bucharest must be the safest way to travel. It’s like you enter the fluffy bubble of indestructable security, where you float to your destination in a glowing sphere of joy, to the rhythm of whatever music the cabbie is playing. The genre is easy to guess, it’s the one that makes your navel go wild.
Now. Statistical evidence has proven the importance of seatbelts more than I could begin to emphasize here. So I’ll just try and guess what reasons are floating in these guys’ minds:
a) Seatbelts are culturally flawed: they symbolize constraint and imprisonment. Wearing one is the equivalent of promoting slavery.
b) Seatbelts are an insult: if you are afraid of a crash, you’re basically calling your driver an incompetent rookie.
c) One word: Omen. You wear it, you attract the bad spirits, and bad things will happen, that are in no way the driver’s fault. Note: this does not conflict with the previous reason, because these bad things only include pianos falling from skyscrapers, meteors, terrorist attacks and stampedes. Never other vehicles, because your driver is too competent to be crushed by beginners.
d) Fashion, baby! That belt is covering my new Fubu teesh!
e) Confort. As a driver, I like to make sudden movements with my thorax, which trigger the belt to freeze. I must have my freedom of sudden movements. It’s the cabbie manifesto. And all those who enter my cab must have this freedom. It’s a political thing.
or
f) Speed. If my passenger wears his seatbelt, it will take him extra seconds to get off when I stop in the middle of the road, blocking everybody else. This will cause everyone to start honking and cursing. And I wouldn’t mind, but this can become pretty annoying when it happens every 15 minutes, every day. The alternative would be for me to stop only when I’m not blocking everyone else, and to use the turn signal sometimes, too. Unacceptable.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
By law, taxi drivers are allow NOT to wear the seatbelt. The law, as far as I know, doesn’t say anything about the passengers in a taxi. I’m a seatbelt freak myself and i always wear it. Sometimes the drivers tell me I don’t have to put it on, but that’s just like saying “don’t worry, I know how to drive, I won’t kill you”. I wear it anyway, it’s the way I’m used to, when I sit in the front.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Thank you for your excellent post. If I may, I would love to comment about another problem afflicting the taxi culture in Romania. This was highlighted to me at Constanta railway station. There was/is a group of illegal black market taxi drivers who hover around the station and pester anyone who does not look Romanian. To add gravitas to their “$20″ offer they might even take your bag and put it into the car (which is not a yellow taxi car). A group of 8 of us turned up at the station and we were literally swarmed by them. They took one of the bags and I forceably had to take it out of their car. We managed to get to the mini bus (we were heading back from Mamaia and needed to get to Bucharest) but the driver refused to take us claiming that there was no space.
Strangely, the “drivers” seemed to know about this before the bus was even full. After we watched countless Romanians board the bus AFTER we had been told that there was no room, we saw one of the “drivers” shaking hands with the bus driver and handing him some notes. We quickly found two yellow cabs (who were not pestering us) and asked them how much to Bucharest. We ended up paying 25 euros each which isn’t bad considering the fact that we just wanted to get out of there. The next bus could have left 3 hours later and we didn’t fancy sharing our evening with those guys.
We were told at the hotel later that these drivers can be EXTREMELY dangerous. There are countless horror stories of obscene overcharging, physical intimidation and much worse. They have a few of the official bus drivers in their pockets and I implore anyone who reads this NEVER to get into one of these cars. The blatant lack of infrastructure in Romania, especially along the coast, will only serve as a deterrent to tourists and and visitors. Until someone does something about these people Romania will not be taken seriously as a viable or safe holiday destination.
I’ll save the gastroenteritis part of my holiday for another post….