say you’re a cab driver. a sober man and a rather drunk woman boards your cab. the woman wants to go home, but the man insist on going to his house instead. they cannot agree on a destination. what do you do? is this even a moral question?
IANACD, but I would probably wait a couple minutes for them to agree. I think for most cabbies who actually need to make money for their families, it would depend on who’s paying.
sleeping. they couldn’t agree. since the man is paying, you send them to his home. much later you discover on the papers that he had date raped the woman. how do you feel?
She probably drank the drinks that got her drunk on her own. I (cab driver) certainly didn’t force them on her. So I am not responsible for what happens to her after I drive her somewhere. Any more than I would be responsible if her drunken state causes her to fall over the front step after I drive her home.
If she doesn’t want to go with him to his house, she can simply step out of the cab and take another one.
P.S. In most localities, a cab driver is required to deliver passengers to where they want to go, or face the loss of his cab license.
But many locations forbid a cabdriver to become an accessory to a kidnapping, too.
I was a cabdriver for a few years. While I don’t remember this particular situation coming up, plenty did that required a judgement call.
We had a (borrowed) saying that, “Discretion is the better part of being a cabdriver.” If one is insufficiently grounded to begin with, one soon learns the merits and pitfalls of attempting to intervene in a stranger’s life.
And the pitfalls loom large if one considers intervening in an unknown couple’s interaction. Chances are very good that if you do, you’ll wind up SOL when everybody tells their tale to the police.
If the woman acquiesced to the guy’s persistence, I drop’em off, get paid and that’s the end of it for me. If I later learn she was raped by the guy that night, that’s bad, but so be it. She made bad choices that were beyond my ability and responsibility to exercise any control over.
If the guy (or anyone, be it sober guy, drunk guy or apparent lesbian dominatrix) attempted to physically coerce her (or him) to leave the cab against her protest, I’d first call the cops and then attempt to depart with her and without him. I might possibly physically intervene, but that would take extreme circumstances.
One way or another, I’d have the cops coming.
While taxicabs are generally regarded as public transportation and regulated, a one time pop for refusing a destination would not likely result in anything more than a citation and fine.