The Worst Crimes Against Cab Drivers

One women tried to out-Hollywood Hollywood when she hijacked the cab that had picked her up in the town of Palm Springs. She held the driver hostage and demanded to drive to Rialto. The cab ran out of gas on the highway, amid dozens of law enforcement officers, tear gas, and flash bangs. She was taken to get psychiatric evaluation and the cabbie was no worse for the wear.

Cab drivers are known for their inventive ways of getting through traffic and the creative routes they sometimes choose. One driver took this a step further; his passenger pulled a knife on him, demanding money. Finding himself without a can of pepper spray, the driver improvised, spraying the passenger with a can of areosol deodorant which caused him to drop the knife and flee the vehicle.

In Hong Kong, no one bats an eyelash when their change isn't exact. It's well known that cabbies, in order to streamline transaction and minimize their work, will round the amount of change owed to a customer to the nearest whole number. Ask for exact and they'll be happy to provide it. One driver followed the custom on a fare and was not asked for exact change. Days later, the police were involved and he found himself in court over six cents. $0.06 put this man in the hands of The Man.

"I keep thinking, 'I just dropped her off. She was just a normal passenger. Why has she done this?" The words of an innocent cab driver who was accused of attacking a female passenger. Luckily, the driver had been experimenting with the sound recording function on his smart phone and had a recording of the entire, eventless ride. The accuser got 16 months in prison.

The minutiae of municiple parking can be difficult to unfold, as one cab driver found out. Parking his cab in a metered spot, and paying for a few minutes time, he hightailed it to the restroom. He came back to find a $500 ticket. After protesting, police backup arriving, additional $600 and $169 tickets issued, the driver took the world's most expensive pit stop.

Few details are known about the death of a Brookly Livery cab driver, but one fare went terribly south. A man and woman, seen on security footage fleeing the scene, stabbed him in the eye, causing him to crash to his death. He left behind several children and a loving wife.

If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. A woman in Singapore successfully evaded paying her cab far at least 34 times by claiming each time that she did not have money. She was eventually aprehended when she gave an angry and unpaid cab driver her contact info in order to pay him in the future. When she never coughed it up, he went to the police who quickly put a stop to the madness.

The start of the workday is tough for us all, but one NYC cab driver's experience puts the rest of ours to shame. His first fare, a 21-year-old SVA student, quickly began mocking his Muslim faith before pulling a knife and stabbing him several times through the divider. This came at the height of the debate over a proposed Islamist Community Center to be built near Ground Zero. The attacker received 9 1/2 years in prison and the driver thankfully survived.

In an attempt to threaten the Mexican Open tennis tournament that was scheduled to start later in the week, Cartel members greusomely murdered 12 cab drivers over several days. In the end, the violence subsided and the tournament commenced.

There are only so many things that can go wrong as a cab driver, and almost all of them happened to one specific cabbie on June 17th, 2012. A passenger decided to stab the driver, eject him from the vehicle, and peel out, leaving him for dead. Thinking better of this plan, the passenger returned in order to run over the driver. Luckily, several pedestrians intervened, preventing the thief from mowing down his victim.