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A policy needs to be established to guarantee a cab ride when a person is trying to be responsible by not drinking and driving, regardless of the distance of the ride.
Recently, a friend of mine called both Yellow Cab and Metro Taxi for a ride home after he had several drinks at my house. He lives three miles from my house. He made several calls over the next hour and a half and, although he was assured a cab was on its way, nobody showed up. The truth came out during his last call almost two hours later. The dispatcher said nobody would take the call. By then my friend had sobered up and driven home. But what if he hadn’t waited? Something tragic may have happened.
I believe taxi companies have an ethical responsibility for serving the public when safety is at risk, even if it means a short ride. Policy dictated by the Public Utilities Commission could help keep drunk drivers off the road.

Joe Militello, Denver

READER COMMENTS

well joe go get a cab and you can take all the drunks home when they want to puke in your cab.
did it every occure to you to be a good host and not let your friend get so drunk they couldnt drive home or better yet why didnt you offer to allow them to stay over night?
naw we need the government to be responsible for people like you, right?

When you call for a cab, don't say your destination. If they ask, tell them DIA. Then when you get into the cab, tell them where you want to go. The cab cannot refuse to take you there so long as your not acting in an unlawful, disorderly or endangering manner.

....if they refuse to take you there, don't argue, calmly write down the number of the cab and the name of the driver and get out of the cab. There is an on-line complaint system with the Colorado PUC...use it.

Cabs are licensed to serve the public. Don't like serving the public?, don't drive a cab. Riders need to raise the standards. Cab companies wont.

I believe the letter writer has the ethical responsibility reversed. He is the one who gave the alchohol to his guest and he is the one responsible, not the taxi company. I would suggest he is the one who should either provide tranportation, sleeping accomodations for the night, or limitation on the amount of alchohol consumed.

Why does a private company that is engaged in the transportation business have to take anyone who has had too much to drink home? Frequently such people can be sick, difficult to deal with and in some cases unsafe riders for the cab driver to be around.

Taxi companies are private businesses and the drivers are responsible for their own vehicles and essentially running their own business. They are not the servants of people who think they can snap their fingers and have a driver showup to haul any drunk that may need a ride.

Hey Tom, hay 8:37, reread the Joes letter, the cab didn't come because he was drunk, but because it was such a short ride.

Wait until the dum national convention and all these visitors try to get a short ride. They're used to cabs in BIG cities where cabs take them everywhere.

Maybe the cabs will be too busy taking the bums off the 16th street mall out to Aurora to hide them.

Joe, are you for real? Why should taxi companies have an ethical responsibiltiy for serving the public (your drunk friend)? YOU are the one that should have the "ethical responsibility" or even moral responsibilty. Why did you continue serving your friend alcohol when he was past the point of sobriety? Why did you let your friend leave after only 2 hours? He was probably still intoxicated. If your friend would have caused a car accident or killed someone it would have been YOUR fault!

Lousy service by a taxi company charged with providing public transportation = pontifications about social behavour. The infection grows uninhibited.

Tom LLoyd:
While the cab company is a business, it is not a "private" one, it is a publicly regulated utility, and as such, is REQUIRED to serve the public.
The reason cab companies are under the purview of the PUC is to ensure that, as a public utility, they do not pick at random whom they choose to serve. They must make their services available to all who want it, not just the most profitable fares.

Welcome to taxicab de-regulation. Hey, everybody was waving the flag for it last year. In the past there was an enforceable regulation requiring service be provided in a timely manner. That regulation still exists today but how do you police the dozens of cab companies that are out there? By the time the passenger realized that there was an error the driver is long gone. That was the reason for the regulated monopoly system. You didn't have to punish the cab, you could punish the company. For the reason the drivers are not going to pick up a short fare, look to yourselves. They are in business to make money. If they have to go a distance greater than the length of the fare it becomes a simple math problem. If there is additional business in the area then there is no problem making money. IF it is isolated or a "dead" area, the driver may have to lose money to provide the service. In the past companies had programs in place to deal with this problem. Today there is no mechanism to enforce the rules. Of course there is a rule stating that a passenger must not be so drunk they cannot walk or communicate also. You want social services call them. Cab driving is a business.

As for the convention, there will be many fares in a limited area, mostly from those using someone else's money to pay for them. The fat cats will have tied up every limo in Colorado creating this taxi business. Security will require that only verified transportation be permitted in the area which means current taxi companies and their people who pass muster in advance. Taxi cabs make money just like every other business: income-expenses= profit. Part of the expense side is the time necessary to reach a passenger, transport him and then get to the next fare. Length of the trip is really secondary to the amount of time it takes to run the trip. The biggest money maker for cabs used to be the stock show. A large number of people in one area needing transportation. No matter how short a fare was there was another one close by when you were empty. The system worked, with traffic's normal difficulties, until the city decided to "fix" the problems. Result, more traffic, fewer fares, more unhappy tourists and stockmen who, for the first time in decades, decided to drive themselves rather than go to a holding pen for people needing transportation. The Democratic Convention will be like that. Cab drivers, the professionals, will make a lot of honest money. Some of those with tricked up meters will make money as there will be no way to police the hotels and all the restaurants. OF course, I fully expect a few of the drivers to make money as I once did, by selling a stack of blank cab receipts. Averaged about a dollar a blank when the Head Start Convention was here in the 80's. Seems there are always some people on expense accounts.

Srtranded is right. All you have to do is lie about it and the cab will take you home.

Try telling the cab driver ahead of time what the problem is and paying and tipping before the ride. Maybe that will help.

Don`t they, as independent business people, have the right to refuse service, just like bars, restaurants and hotels?

Sharon B.

Don't know what the rules are now but back in 1990, last year I drove, the driver could refuse a fare for several reasons one of which was the passenger presenting a danger to the driver because he (the passenger) was too drunk to be coherent. The companies also could not refuse to send a cab but the drivers were independent so they could ignore certain areas or intersections. As for lying it will work but cab drivers have long memories and loud voices to tell their fellow cabbies about the lying *&() at 123 Main Street. The day 123 Main Street really does need to get to the airport most cabbies will remember the lie.

Under de-regulation any rules are meaningless to the little companies and the big ones are using independent contractors to fill the drivers' seats. It's going to be worse before it gets better, if it ever does. The convention will tie up traffic and the big taxi companies will be the only ones with enough drivers to get the security clearances to go into the "hot" zones. They aren't going to take chances on the little guys because they have too many cases where the person actually behind the wheel isn't the one who's supposed to be there. That means no driver's license in most cases too. Big companies are the only ones where the drivers can make a living from the radio instead of the cab stands. That means that the people who call cabs during the convention will wait longer for less service. But some of the drivers will still work the outside lane just because they wouldn't give any big convention a second chance.

How far have we as a Society fallen when, without any apparent embarrassment, someone can write a letter to the editor, admitting to his own inability to be responsible, and blame it on everyone else?
Several years ago when I retired from the Navy, I had a blow out party, it's kind of a tradition. No one was expected to bring anything but an appetite and a thirst. Planning took a bit of effort but it came off without a hitch. Most important part, to me? Having two people, wife and oldest child, available for mandatory rides for anyone who got even a little tipsy. Put a lot of miles on the cars, but no one got a ticket, no one was involved in an 'accident' and no one was injured.
But then it simply seemed responsible to me to be responsible for guests who I provided a party situation to.
Guess things have changed.
No, people-some of them anyway, are simply looking to blame someone else for their own irresponsible behavior.

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