Last night I got a taxi home from work. It had been a long day, I had period cramps that beggared belief and I feared that if I took the tube home I might well end up crying on the Northern line. I ordered a taxi via a service called Kapten, and the driver and I barely spoke beyond an exchange about whether he was waiting for me, and my asking him to put the radio on. When we arrived at my house, he suddenly became aggressive, telling me that I shouldn’t have taken a taxi, that I was lazy. I can’t remember everything that he said, but he was clearly angry with me. I was confused, and I was scared. Eventually I got out of the car, furious and frightened and slammed the door as hard as I could and stuck my middle finger up before hurrying inside and bursting into tears.
It doesn’t matter how much of a feminist you are, how brave or ballsy you are, it’s hard not to feel afraid in the presence of someone who is stronger than you, in a position of control (aka behind the wheel of a car) and seems to be angry with you.
There’s a joke that when we were kids we were told not to talk to strangers on the internet, or to get into cars with people we don’t know. Now we use the internet to summon a stranger and get in their car, and it’s just part of life. But not risk-free. I know several women who’ve passed out tired and drunk in taxis and woken up to find that their driver is making sexual advances that they can’t consent to.
I’ve also had plenty of drivers who didn’t mean to make me feel uncomfortable, but did so by accident. Men who said ‘you look good - where are you going?’ or the one very specific man who said, ‘you smell like you’ve just had a bath, it’s lovely’. None of those comments were designed to make me feel unsafe. But they still did. And last night, while this man told me off for taking a taxi – the taxi I was paying him to drive – I wondered where the anger was going to stop. If he was going to lock the doors. If he might be angry enough to actually be dangerous.
The ride service I was using – Kapten – pride themselves on being a better option than Uber, who earlier this week had their licence revoked over safety concerns. Kapten previously put up adverts around London about how they pay their taxes. And yet they didn’t have an emergency contact for me to use, so after this man sped off into the night, probably even angrier seeing as I’d slammed his door and given him the finger, he kept driving. He almost certainly picked up other women. Did he bollock them as well? Was he even angrier with them than he was with me?
I’m not for a second suggesting that taxi drivers are any more dangerous than anyone else. I take a lot of taxis, it’s my biggest indulgence, and over the years I’ve had drivers wait for me to get inside before they drive off to make sure that I’m OK (unnecessary but very sweet). I’ve enjoyed careers advice, love advice and countless celebrity anecdotes from wonderful people who drive taxis. But the point still remains: as a woman, when you get into a taxi, you are vulnerable. You usually keep your wits about you. And it should be the responsibility of the management company to make sure that if you do not feel safe during your journey, that issue is dealt with swiftly and efficiently.
If you are going to run a business that connects people with drivers, you have to take an element of responsibility for that. Perhaps the people who run these companies don’t know what it feels like to get into a cab and have the prickle of fear that something isn’t right. Perhaps they’re not women and they haven’t spent their entire adult lives walking with their keys between their knuckles as a weapon and thinking about where the nearest exit is if they need to escape.
That’s our reality. It’s not being a victim or being a whiner to say it out loud. Part of being a woman is trying to work out the difference between anxiety (based on being taught that safety means never walking alone or in the dark) genuine threats. When you consider that we have been taught to look for the danger in every possible situation, it’s actually pretty impressive that we manage to walk home in the dark, go on a date with a stranger or get in a taxi at all.
Kapten told Grazia that they are investigating the incident, but that they are not legally able to discuss this specific incident.
Kapten told Grazia Daily that they are investigating the incident, but that they are not legally able to discuss this specific incident.