Taxis and ride sharing

Traveling by car is definitely much less complicated than buses and trains, but it does have the cost factor to consider. However, in some countries, like the United States, public transportation sometimes may not be available or it is so scarce that paying for a car ride maybe the only option.

Taxis

Though different types of ride sharing services are becoming popular around the world, it is worth discussing taxies, as they are still widely available, and definitely have advantages and disadvantages over ride sharing.

One of the great advantages is that it is the easiest to call a taxi if we know a company’s phone number. However, finding a taxi alone on the street is almost impossible, unless we know where a taxi station is, where they are usually lined up. Otherwise, the easiest way to find a taxi is to ask for assistance.

The next question is the payment. There are different regulations in different countries, and it is important to have a sense of what the final amount will be, at least approximately. In an ideal case a taxi meter will calculate the price and the driver will honestly tell us how much it is. Some companies have it all automated and the passenger can pay with a credit card from the back seat, where even a voice guidance can be activated. The exact opposite is when there isn’t a meter and a payment method, this is still the case in some countries. For all practical purposes, these are ride services which can charge anything they want to. During my last trip, a service asked me three times the general taxi price, and it wasn’t even outstanding. Unless we know what type of taxi we are using and we are familiar with the regulations, it is worth asking about the terms before getting into the car, it can save quite a bit. This is not to say that we can’t agree on a negotiated price, for example when using an autocar in India, where certain transportation does not have a meter system.

Ride sharing

One of the biggest advantage of ride sharing services is that we can call one as long as we have a mobile phone, and we don’t even have to know our location, because the driver receives this information through the GPS. Though generally one should always know where they are, this is not always the case, or we just don’t have to worry about finding out the address of a store that we just walked out of. The GPS based location can also be helpful when someone gets lost in an area where it is difficult to navigate back to a known location. Another great advantage is that depending on the traffic, we can always get at least an approximate price and duration before getting into the car. Most ride sharing services developed mobile applications which work reasonably well with the phone’s built in screen reader.

Traveling with a guide dog

One of the biggest issues with taxies and ride sharing services these days is when we travel with a guide dog. While in more and more countries it is mandatory to accept a service animal companion, there are thousands of cases when a passenger is refused. We can always negotiate, but the reality is that most often it is best to let this go and contact the company itself to work out the solution. There are many reasons why drivers would refuse a guide dog, such as being afraid of animals, allergy or just not wanting dog hair in their cars. As long as the dog is well-behaved and groomed, drivers don’t have the right to refuse them. Though recently some ride sharing services provide mandatory training to drivers about blind people who travel with a guide dog, it still hasn’t completely solved the problem. What became mor frequent is that instead of directly refusing the service, when a driver sees a person with a guide dog, they just speed up and cancel the ride with some excuse. At this point, when the person is completely blind, it is rather difficult to prove what happened, so a complaint is also harder to file.

I have to say though that this is by no means the norm, I took well over 1000 rides in the last few years and I had less than 10 issues getting my guide dog into the car.