Attacks sombre reality of being a cabbie

Posted by Ross Arrowsmith on Thursday, January 22nd 2009 under Workplace Violence

With robbery, assaults and murders all possible in a day’s work, taxi driving has fast become one of the most dangerous jobs in Canada.

In fact, more taxi drivers than police officers were killed on the job in a four-year period at the beginning of this decade.

The occupational hazards of working alone at night, and handling cash in remote locations, make cabbies a target for violence.

In any given year, almost a quarter of all drivers across the country are attacked.

But the provincial government is trying to improve the odds here in Nova Scotia.

New regulations stipulate that taxi drivers must take steps to minimize violence. And a separate taxi driver’s handbook – also published last year — outlines how to do that.

It’s all part of an acknowledgement that the industry is prone to violence, says a spokeswoman for the Nova Scotia Department of Labour and Workforce Development.

“They have acknowledged in recent years that the taxi service sector has been the target of violence,” Heather Mizzi said Wednesday.

Last spring, the province’s Violence in the Workplace Regulations came into force under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The measures aren’t inclusive to taxi drivers but apply to the industry, says Ms. Mizzi.

They outline that employers must take reasonable measures to minimize — and to the extent possible — eliminate the risk of violence in the workplace.

Nothing was mandated across the board but the manager of Bob’s and Blue Bell Taxi in Dartmouth, which employed missing cabbie Sergei Kostin, said all drivers take safety precautions.

“You’re just supposed to have some sort of safety thing installed in the cars, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a shield or a camera,” Kim DeMont said Wednesday.

She’s “pretty sure” Mr. Kostin, who hasn’t been seen since he picked up his last known fare in Dartmouth Saturday afternoon, didn’t have either in his cab.

But he did have a panic button and a GPS locator system, both of which are considered acceptable safety features under the new provincial regulations.

Bob’s and Blue Bell Taxi installed them in all cars back in October, 2005, and they help connect drivers in dangerous situations.

Another driver said it wouldn’t help to have all the safety bells and whistles anyway.

“I don’t see how a camera or a shield would help in a situation,” said the 30-year driving veteran, who didn’t want his name published. “Because if someone wants to kill someone badly enough, they will.”

The shields run about $800 to $1,400 and the cameras are an extra $1,200, so he’s glad the measures weren’t mandated by the province.

“I don’t see why they would mandate them unless they planned on paying for it. Why should we have to pay (to control) two per cent of society?”

Despite the spike in reported cab driver violence in Halifax, which has seen at least five taxi drivers killed or critically injured in the past decade, he doesn’t think Halifax is too dangerous a city.

“I still think it’s the same as it’s been. It (the violence) comes and it goes. One month they’re robbing stores and the next it’s cab drivers or maybe it’s little old ladies on the (Halifax) Commons.”

He’s never been assaulted or robbed but has been subjected to “the normal bullshit on Friday and Saturday nights, putting up with the drunks.”

He has escaped what many drivers across the country seem to experience on a regular basis. A recent study outlined that one in four drivers were assaulted in a one-year period.

A separate study by Statistics Canada in 2007 shows that between 2001 and 2005, taxi driving was the most dangerous job in Canada.

Eleven of the 69 on-the-job murders during that four-year period were cab drivers. During the same period, 10 police officers were killed.