Have you ever wondered why people refer to cab services by the name taxi services? Have you ever wondered why they refer to the cabs as taxis? Have you ever wondered why most of the taxis in many countries are painted yellow?
Taxi services are dated back to the taxi amsterdam seventeenth century in Paris and London. People back then started using the hackney carriage services that were drawn by horses. People hired the horse ride to get to far destinations. From this idea came the concept of taxi service in the later years. You might be asking why then did they decide to call them taxi?
The name taxi originated from a French word coined by the first man to import cabs, Harry Allen of New York. He referred to them as taximeter cabriolet. Cabriolet was a French word used to mean a carriage. The taximeter was a mechanical device that was used to calculate the fare that a passenger would have to pay for using the transport. So the prefix taxi- in the name taximeter came from the Latin word taxa which meant charge or tax charged for a service. The name taxi is a short form of taximeter carriage. Allen realized that the yellow color would assist in recognizing the taxi cab from afar and painted the taxis yellow.
During the first Battle of the Marne in 1974 when the Birmingham pub bombings took place, the fire officer requested the taxi operators association to transport wounded people to the nearest hospital which was Birmingham Accident Hospital. Up to date taxis are beneficial in emergency cases, like when one wants to catch a flight urgently. If you use a car of your own you will need to make arrangements for a parking place, worry about security etc which can easily be avoided if you take a taxi instead.
Recently while going to my workplace in the morning, I got trapped in a traffic jam for over 30 minutes. I thought of how much I was spending on fuel while using my car while going to work. With engine running for over 30 minutes without moving an inch just waiting for a little chance for me to remove my foot from the brake pedal and the clutch and press on the accelerator, I started calculating the cost of using my car against using a taxi. The fuel cost, the tear and wear cost, parking fee all sliced down. After leaving for home later that evening, I took an ultimate decision to use a hybrid taxi to my workplace daily.
If most of us used taxi to go to work and to other places where taxi services are available, it would also cut on the CO2 emitted in the atmosphere because fewer cars will be used and therefore lesser amount of CO2 will be produced. The traffic jam reduces by far if most people used the cabs.