This just up, a taxi speeds off with passenger's luggage.
What 'drives' cabbies to such extents? Fare increases, rental increase? Living costs?
I tell you, there will be more and more such desperate acts by people who can barely make ends meet!
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Taxi speeds off with her luggage
retiree claims she's so traumatised, she's cancelled trips and has nightmares
By Divya Kirti
August 04, 2006
SHE will not forget this taxi ride in a hurry.
Retiree Jeannette Chan, 58, alleged she was 'robbed in broad daylight' by a cabby who sped off with her two bags in the boot on 29 Jun.
She claimed she was so traumatised by the event that she postponed her upcoming trip to Malaysia, cancelled her subsequently planned trip to China, and even started having nightmares.
And she found it ironic that her brother-in-law, who had recently returned from the US, told her that 'people in the USA always say Singapore is so safe'.
--Hedy Khoo
'I want people to know this kind of thing happens in Singapore,' she said, adding that people should note the taxi's licence plate number whenever they hire one.
Mrs Chan said that just before dropping her off, the taxi driver had asked her whether she was leaving the country or returning.
'So how could he have forgotten about my luggage?'
MANDARIN NOTES
Mrs Chan estimated that the luggage contained personal items worth $1,000, a few hundred ringgit, and Mandarin notes painstakingly compiled over six months.
She was to take a Mandarin class that day, and as the contact details of her classmates were in the notes, she said the cabby could have called any of them to get in touch with her.
On that day, at 9.45am, she took a blue Comfort taxi from Haig Road outside her Geylang HDB flat.
She was to go to Ipoh, Malaysia, early the next day with her sister and brother-in-law, and then onwards to China.
Because she had Mandarin lessons late in the evening at the Marine Parade Community Centre, she decided to take her luggage to her sister's house on East Coast Road.
Mrs Chan said '(the driver) opened the boot for me, so I put the luggage in there'.
When the taxi reached the destination, she paid the fare.
RAN AFTER CAB
But to her surprise, she claimed, 'as soon as I got off, and before I could even turn around, he sped off.
'And he was so fast! What if my foot had been under the wheel?
'I thought you would only see this kind of thing in a Hong Kong movie!'
She said she tried running after the cab, waving her hands in the air hoping he would spot her.
Since it was a short ride, she said, she did not remember what the driver looked like or the taxi number.
While she spotted a global positioning system console in the cab, she did not remember whether it was turned on.
She immediately called Comfort and told them where the cab was headed, but he could not be traced.
POLICE REPORT
Despite the fact that she had already made a police report, Comfort told her nothing more could be done.
Mrs Chan said she received three e-mails from Comfort which she showed The New Paper.
Comfort said that 'taxi drivers are neither our employees nor our agents. They are hirers who hire taxis from us'.
Nevertheless, Mrs Chan said she hopes the company can do something to prevent something like this from happening again.
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Comfort: get receipt, note licence number
THE safest thing to do after a taxi ride is to get a receipt, Ms Tammy Tan, Group Corporate Communications Officer, ComfortDelGro, told The New Paper.
As the receipt contains information such as the licence plate number, the date of the ride, and the time of pick up and drop off, it allows the company to track down drivers if something is lost.
The most important piece of information to note is the licence plate number - without which it can be impossible to find the taxi, as Mrs Chan found out.
The company said drivers are instructed to remind passengers to take their belongings placed inside the vehicle or in the boot.
ComfortDelGro did not want to say how many of their taxis are equipped with a GPS console, or whether errant drivers could turn them off.
