Cab service flawed, dangerous
By Mike Capizzani
Student Columnist

> February 16, 2001

It’s only $5 and you can pay on Deacon Dollars.” This was the war cry heard by university students who were bombarded with news of a new cab service that was to be made available to all students. It’s been almost a year since the university was introduced to Willard’s cab service (725-CABS) and what a year it has been. I associate the cab service most with communism. It seems great on paper, but turns out to be miserable in practice. The cab service was set up to deter university students from driving drunk — like I said, a very genuine idea. But it is my belief that this awful service has actually increased drunk driving. But before you start thinking I am an idiot, let me explain.

I cannot think of a more horrible experience in my college career than trying to get a cab from this service (except maybe on-line registration). If you are lucky enough to get through to the dispatch station, you are usually met with a bitter person who is mumbling sounds that do not resemble anything close to a language. If you happen to be an exceptional listener you might understand them and they will take down all your basic information (location and phone number). Now of course if you can’t give them a phone number (because, I don’t know, you might be at a pay phone off campus) they hang up on you, leaving you to find your own way home.

If you can give them a phone number, they tell you they’ll be there in 45 minutes and abruptly hang up. OK, wait a minute. The cab service only works in a five-mile radius around campus. Now I haven’t taken geometry since sophomore year of high school, but I am pretty sure that no distance between two points in a five-mile radius should be 45 minutes away. Even if all the drivers are occupied there is no reason it should take them 45 minutes to get to you. What’s worse is that, if you stick around the 45 minutes waiting for them, you’ll find out that 45 minutes was a very optimistic estimate. I have had friends wait two hours for a cab that never came. By the time they gave up they were sober enough to drive themselves home.

If, by the grace of God, you actually end up getting a cab, the disaster continues. All the cab drivers are either incredibly mean, or incredibly creepy. One of these esteemed cab drivers once stopped the car for 15 minutes to tell my friends about his expansive porn collection. Another told my British friend that he came from a “miserable city.” Now I understand they do not have a fun job, but silence would be better than being unnecessarily mean.

I know many of you are probably thinking, “Well I guess a cheap, bad cab service is better than no cab service.” That is both naïve and idiotic. Let’s suppose an off-campus student decides to party on campus for the night. If there were no cab service, that student would most likely either decide to stay sober, or arrange to spend the night on campus. However, if the same student thinks he/she can get home at the end of the night via a cab, they are likely to get drunk. What happens if the cab takes two hours to show up? Drunk people are not very patient. Once they have the idea in their head that they are going home that night, they’re going home. So now, sans cab, the drunk student either drives home intoxicated, or staggers down the side of a busy road in the cold night until he or she gets home. Who knows if he/she will ever get home safely?

I am not writing this editorial just to be funny. I am writing it because I am tired of seeing my friends drive home drunk or walk home two miles in the cold. I want to know that at the end of the night they will get home safe. I do not pretend to have any solutions, but something needs to be done. I simply want all the administrators and students who are busy patting themselves on the back for setting up this service to take a break and look at what they’ve created. They’ve created a monster that sooner or later may lead to injury or death. But maybe I shouldn’t complain. I mean after all it’s only five Deacon Dollars. I guess we really do get what we pay for.