Chicago Cabbies to Drunks: You Puke, You Pay

If you have a friend who lives in a major metropolis like New York City or Chicago (as taxis are, for those cities, what cars are for the rest of the country), there is a good chance that the friend of yours (of a friend of theirs) has maybe had too much to drink one night. If so, thank goodness they're in a taxi, right? Well, ask the cabbie ...

Most of the time passengers are total slobby slobbersons: eating, sometimes smoking or talking loudly on their cell phones while going from point A to B. But the worst offense, truly, must be the overimbibed fare who throws up. That's right, in the taxi. This is not the stuff of urban myth, or of just Friday and Saturday nights. (As a friend once told me, the weekends are "for amateurs.")

Cabbies in Chicago are rallying the city council to allow a $50 surcharge for passengers who can't hold their liquor and lose it, consequently all over god knows where in the cab that the driver maintains.

NYMag's Daily Intel has a humorous take on the grody topic and why a surcharge is a bad idea:

"You just puked in a cab! Your night is already bad. The last thing you need is to lose $50."

Well. True. Then again, nobody's coming into their office to throw up under their desk now are they?

[Via Chicago-Sun Times]

Photo courtesy Daniel Wildman@sxc.hu