How to Be Safe in Taxis While Travelling Abroad

When you are abroad you probably will depend on taxis quite often for your transportation. Follow these tips to ensure a safe ride.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A cool head.

1. Investigate and understand how the taxis work in the city of your destination. In some cities and countries, taxis will obligatorily use a taxi meter for their fares. In other countries, the fare will be negotiated.

2. When you leave your hotel, if there is an idle taxi, don't take it, unless it is a taxi that has some affiliation to your hotel. Random taxis could await outside the hotel looking for easy targets. It is better to flag down a taxi. However, if the taxi driver appears to have familiarity with the hotel staff, you should be safe.

3. If the fare is to be negotiated, then before you get into the taxi, make sure to negotiate the price. If you forget, then you may be charged a lot more than you expect.

4. Don't get in a Volkswagen Beetle taxi, especially in Mexico. These taxis have only 2 doors and passengers can and sometimes are trapped in the back seats and robbed.

5. When you get in the taxi, it is best to sit in the back, preferably directly behind the driver. This way the driver will feel more vulnerable and will be less likely to rob you.

6. Apart from the above step, it may be wise to sit next to a door that has handles. Often times, older taxis have a broken door handle and can not be opened from inside. It is best to be able to open the door if you suddenly need to leave the taxi.

7. Lock both back doors once you get in, as this will prevent people from opening them. Roll up the windows, although in some places the heat and lack of an air conditioner prevents this.

8. Try to have a general idea of where you are going and the direction you are going to be heading in. This will help if the taxi driver ends up going the wrong way in order to charge you too much or in order to take you to a place to rob you.

9. When you arrive at your destination, try to be courteous to the taxi driver. If you feel you are being overcharged, go ahead and pay the extra without complaint, at least until you are familiar with the territory. Quite often it is the case that the taxi driver acted appropriately and it is the traveler's inexperience and fear that leads them to argue with the taxi driver. It is better to just pay the full fare without having an incident, assuming the amount isn't obviously way out of range.

10. If you have a good experience and the taxi driver was cordial and took you to your destination directly and safely, then give them a tip.

11. Ask for business cards from good taxi drivers so that you can use their services in the future. This is particularly important when traveling in dangerous areas.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't be too paranoid. The vast majority of taxi drivers are good, hard-working people.

[boscorelli]

on 7/14/2009 The best way to be safe in a taxi is to make sure you know 1) how much the fare will be and 2) where you are going. I use TaxiFareFinder.com