11 ms·

London’s Legendary Taxi-Driver Test Puts Up a Fight in the Age of GPS

122 points by jaynos 12y ago

IvyMike 12y ago
Reading the article, I can't help but think that a GTA/CrazyTaxi street-accurate video game based on this test would be amazing.
- balabaster 12y ago
  You could probably sell it to the Knowledge Boys & Girls cramming for the test - they wouldn't have to log so many hours on the road putting wear & tear on their rented vehicles trying to cram for the test. They can run around for as long as they can stay awake without ever leaving the comfort of their home. Plug it into something like Occulus rift or some VR environment... and if they hit traffic, they can kill that mission and start again, finding a better route instead of in being stuck in the very tiresome reality of sitting in traffic for 40 minutes by taking a wrong turn.
  - solistice 12y ago
    The main problem I see with that is detail and the age of your data. Drawing from experience trying to memorize a journey through the city of Bale, which whilst less large than London is quite winding and certainly suffers from the same compounding of historical and modern buildings. Going through my route, spots where i stopped to take in more details are very much more tangible in my mind. The wide park circled by a walkway where I stopped for a short break is quite vivid in my memory, and I can pull dozens and dozens of points from it. The path along the viaduktstraße leading up to it is far more faint in my memory, considering I only remember the Paulskirche and one of the bridges towards it. Considering only something akin to Google Streetview would be practical, there seems to be just to few points your mind can latch onto to create a detailed image of the location. In addition to that, your other senses do play a significant role in remembering locations. Also, cab drivers need to know very recent information you're tempted to overlook designing a game like that. How fast does traffic go at this time of day at this location? Are they setting up construction over here? It's often not even realized consciously, but rather factors into decisions on a lower level, turning into the "hunch" you have about a certain route or even more generally a certain course of action. So unless there is a way to have a perfect representation of the city that is also less than a day or two old, it's not really a replacement for actually going through those streets.
    - gknoy 12y ago
      Does the test check the best way, or only knowledge of finding Some route? I could see someone learning the city topology with VR, and then using experience to learn congestion patterns.
  - barrkel 12y ago
    They're normally on scooters. Stuck in traffic is a very rare occurrence for someone on a scooter.
dkopi 12y ago
Infamous would be a much better description than legendary.
bmsleight 12y ago
Check out the run calling halfway down the article (Matt McCabe “calls-over” a long run)
- blahedo 12y ago
  Yes, and notice how much of the run involves "forward" calls---that's when you stay on the same road, but it changes name. It's mindblowing. If you want to track the run (it's accurate!) the starting point is right next to this node in OSM: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/279219489 http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/279219489
jes5199 12y ago
GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit, it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voice and accidently got on the freeway, getting us stuck in cross-bay traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get to the next exit. Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-are-we-actually-rating-when-we-rate-other-people/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar... ) It's going to be a long, long time before we put anything approaching the depth of information that years of experience brings into our algorithmic routing systems. And startups are structurally disincentivized from trying to, anyway.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  That's really interesting. I wonder if there's scope and technology for a collaborative constraint-based solver that finds more effective routing for cities.
- custardcream 12y ago
  Well I drive around London a lot during the day time (inside CC zone) and Google Maps is pretty damn good on Android. I did a few years in taxis but owning a car that is CC exempt is cheaper including parking in NCP holes. Part of the reason its cheaper is after some experience driving around the city, you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss. "the knowledge" is imminently replaceable by technology and is merely a party trick IMHO.
  - jedc 12y ago
    It's not completely replaceable by technology. Once I had gotten a text from my wife as to where to meet her for dinner with friends. She didn't know the restaurant name, and had gotten the street name wrong. I just read the text to my London black cab driver, he asked me: "Did you mean XXX restaurant on [correct street name]?" (Note: there were multiple restaurants on the street). And sure enough, he was 100% correct. That's the day I learned to really respect drivers with The Knowledge.
conorh 12y ago
I would take a London taxi for the same reason that I'd read a paper book, for the experience, not for the result. The Knowledge is such a wonderful anachronism, and I hope that it can co-exist in some form with new services such as Uber and Lyft, but outside of protectionism I can't see any reason why it should - technology is nearly good enough now to replace it, and in some cases probably better. If it does continue to exist I can't imagine that market for people with the Knowledge will be enough to support the number of London taxi's that are on the streets now.
- gutnor 12y ago
  Most of the black cab I have taken have a also a GPS, so that's not like it is an exclusive type choice, and I wonder why people assume so. Even connected GPS are fairly bad at finding the shortest way if it means running in the other direction for a while and that happens quite often in London and Black Cab driver are quite good at making those kind of info just looking at their gps traffic info. The knowledge is a very useful tool, and in any city, a driver with good local knowledge is what you are looking for, regardless the middleman you use. Technology is only making the trade off of using amateur bearable, and in reality the real value of Uber and others is from the rest of the service provided. A bit like in your example - if you had to go to the bookstore to load a new book on your reader and it could only hold one book at a time, the technological superiority of even the latest generation of kindle would not make them go pass novelty items. Real value of ebook comes from the rest of the services you get from it and that's the reason why even with the shit reading experience, the first gen kindle was a success. The anachronism here is the segregation between black cab and minicab in London and the services the legal restrictions on the services they can offer. Although, IMO, that is not nearly as bad in London as people on HN experience in other places in the world. Black cab are meant to hailed on the street, now, without booking, review or other overhead by drunk people and tourists. Some licensing restriction to make sure you get a basic level of service in those circumstances is probably acceptable. If you have time to plan a bit in advance, there is Uber and plenty of competitors that have always been freed from the restrictions.
goatforce5 12y ago
Several times I had London cabbies stop the fare meter when I showed them (the same) short cut near where I lived. "No, don't go to the lights, turn down this lane!". All of them had their brains explode that there was a better way that saved about 200 meters and 30 seconds of travel. I'm not sure if there's an (unwritten?) rule that you get the rest of the fare for free if they're taking you a long way, but there was no resentment from them. All of them were incredulous there was a better way to do it. (Just looked at Streetview. There's nothing special about that lane that should make it a big secret. I guess it must have been No Entry/One Way/something and changed recently before my journeys.)
- justincormack 12y ago
  It is honour. Have had free trips because they didn't know a street in eg Swiss Cottage. It encourages repeat business.
  - peteretep 12y ago
    25% of cab drivers had no clue where Gaskin St was, and I never had any suggest they were going to knock off the fare in three years...
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  Does google maps know this route?
  - goatforce5 12y ago
    Just checked, and yes it does. As I said, the route seemed really obvious to me. It was a quicker way to get from Kingsland Rd to Hackney Rd, so it was two major roads in central London. The short cut involved taking a narrow laneway, and i'm guessing something about that lane changed meaning it had only just become accessible. I also had cabbies turn off the meter late at night. I'd light up a cigarette (back when that was allowed), they'd ask if I cared if they lit up too, and once a guy said "Ahhh, I was heading your way anyway" and he turned off the meter. I lived in East London surrounded by cab drivers, so maybe they were being neighbourly.
solistice 12y ago
Having lived for some time in Beijing, where a "black cab" is a slang term for an unmetered private cab or metered cabs running with the meter off, reading the part of the article detailing "black cab advocacy" and "black cab protests" turned into more of a mental challenge than I would like to admit.
mtalantikite 12y ago
Here in Brooklyn car services seem to have lost the ability to navigate the city in just a few years. You used to be able to call a car service, have a car show up in 5 minutes, and they'd get there with just the cross streets. Now most often the first question is "what's the address so I can put it into my GPS", even with metered cabs. I've been yelled at for asking to take routes that the GPS doesn't suggest, even though I know at 3pm on a Tuesday we shouldn't be on the BQE. Or there's construction on Flatbush and we should go around it. I don't think we need a test quite like London's, but basic knowledge of neighborhoods and major intersections should be required. At least until we get those self driving cars that can optimize routes in real time.
- danielweber 12y ago
  My (limited) experience in Brooklyn is that taxis don't know addresses, they know cross-streets.
  - mtalantikite 12y ago
    Yes, that's generally true with all of NYC, we always give cross streets as reference. I'd never expect anyone to know just based on address number.
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  There are more people than ever in Brooklyn and they are more affluent demanding cabs around an otherwise poorly navigable borough. Some days, weekends and inclement weather, they can't keep up with demand and it takes forever to get a goddamn cab. Also New Yorkers have a "just want" attitude and would rather have rude, un-knowledgeable cabbies than less cabbies. And who cares if the cabbie doesn't like you. It's your right to demand an exact route as long as you're staying in the city. Tell him you're calling 311 and don't tip.
chuckcode 12y ago
As automatics routing software takes into account the extra information of traffic history with real time existing traffic conditions computers will do just as well or better than "The Knowledge Boys". Currently local experience with traffic is very useful, but as that information becomes available electronically and much more comprehensively the playing field will tilt even more to automated analysis. UPS already uses their combined driving history to save millions of man hours and millions of tanks of gas[1]. I have to imagine that Google and others can do even better with all of us implicitly telling routes and existing traffic conditions. Be interesting to know if Google is doing a/b testing with their routes in maps like they do with their website UI. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/ups-uses-big-data-to-make-routes-more-efficient-save-gas.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/ups-uses-big-data-t...
piyush_soni 12y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if they gradually start losing cab drivers.
macieka 12y ago
Even though in London black cabs are significantly more expensive than uber x, they are a much better experience. I often order an Uber in the pretty busy area of Soho, only to stare at the app for 10 minutes as my driver turns into dead end streets time and time again trying to get to my location. I don't really understand why this is happening, because they usually have both a separate GPS and the uber app that should display driving directions. Black cab drivers know so much more about the city it's not even a contest. I have almost totally switched to using Hailo in London for that reason.
rbobby 12y ago
The "knowledge" is a very valuable skill/infoset. The actual driving and interacting with customers is much less valuable. So maybe the way forward is to separate the two skills. Folks with the "knowledge" could act as centralized route planners. The can provide many more routes in the time they could drive one (i.e. a single cabby driving might do 1 call every 20 minutes... but could easily do 10 route plans in the same time). Essentially when someone asks the minicab driver "take me to X", the driver relays this information to a black cab driver at a desk who sends back a custom route. With GPS to identify the starting point and VOIP (via wireless) this could be as easy as a driver using a traditional radio (press the mike button, speak the destination, and viola the route appears on a dash mounted map along with spoken instructions). Very much like the existing examination question/answer format. Maybe you would also need to rotate the route planners out as drivers 1 week out of 4 so they keep up with the "knowledge".
jively 12y ago
London Black cabs are overpriced, and there's no market check that stabilises price, as much as I respect the institution of "The Knowledge", you are still bound by the need to trust your driver, and many are just opportunistic. The Knowledge may make for better navigation, but as a customer, the amount of times it actually comes in useful (road works, accident, awkward route) is very low, 90% of journeys are straightforward. It certainly doesn't justify the 50%-100% price increase for the privilege of hailing the cab on the street vs. by pre-booking, especially when most of the time the route you are taking is short (no Londoner in their right mind would use a black cab for a long journey, unless they have money to squander or it's so late at night that you're desperate) The likelihood of getting any real value out of the knowledge when taking a cab in London is very low, and the fact I need to pay for idling in traffic with an un-capped fare potential on top of jacked rates just makes for a terrible proposition. As a consumer, there's just no value in that, and Black Cabs need to evolve or compete themselves back into relevance, bring on Uber, Lyft, Wheel and any other newcomers. Source: 14 years of being a grumpy Londoner.
nwp90 12y ago
A lot of people seem to miss the point that the Knowledge also acts as a deterrent to bad behaviour by proper cabbies - they have too much invested in their license to be likely to throw it away lightly.
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  It's not about how much they have invested; this is a sunk cost. One cannot change the past. It's about the future revenue they would forego if they were to lose their licence.
Evolved 12y ago
I'm a fan of the 3 yes/no question survey. It doesn't take much longer than rating 1-5 unless you want to add comments. Would you use our service again? Was there anything we could have done better? (+comment) Would you recommend us to your friends and family? Also, let's not forget how people sometimes lose their ability to be objective when they're upset which may manifest itself in the form of a less than 5 star rating for a driver that made 1 small error or said something innocuous that we took offense to.
igonvalue 12y ago
I thought the coolest fact about the Knowledge is that it actually induces observable physical changes in brain anatomy. > She has discovered that the posterior hippocampus, the area of the brain known to be important for memory, is bigger in London taxi drivers than in most people, and that a successful Knowledge candidate’s posterior hippocampus enlarges as he progresses through the test. It seems that, like most things, there might be a tradeoff involved. According to this paper[0], > However, they were significantly worse at forming and retaining new associations involving visual information. We consider possible reasons for this decreased performance including the reduced grey matter volume in the anterior hippocampus of taxi drivers... [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670971/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670971/

122 points by jaynos 12y ago

Reading the article, I can't help but think that a GTA/CrazyTaxi street-accurate video game based on this test would be amazing.

balabaster 12y ago
You could probably sell it to the Knowledge Boys & Girls cramming for the test - they wouldn't have to log so many hours on the road putting wear & tear on their rented vehicles trying to cram for the test. They can run around for as long as they can stay awake without ever leaving the comfort of their home. Plug it into something like Occulus rift or some VR environment... and if they hit traffic, they can kill that mission and start again, finding a better route instead of in being stuck in the very tiresome reality of sitting in traffic for 40 minutes by taking a wrong turn.
- solistice 12y ago
  The main problem I see with that is detail and the age of your data. Drawing from experience trying to memorize a journey through the city of Bale, which whilst less large than London is quite winding and certainly suffers from the same compounding of historical and modern buildings. Going through my route, spots where i stopped to take in more details are very much more tangible in my mind. The wide park circled by a walkway where I stopped for a short break is quite vivid in my memory, and I can pull dozens and dozens of points from it. The path along the viaduktstraße leading up to it is far more faint in my memory, considering I only remember the Paulskirche and one of the bridges towards it. Considering only something akin to Google Streetview would be practical, there seems to be just to few points your mind can latch onto to create a detailed image of the location. In addition to that, your other senses do play a significant role in remembering locations. Also, cab drivers need to know very recent information you're tempted to overlook designing a game like that. How fast does traffic go at this time of day at this location? Are they setting up construction over here? It's often not even realized consciously, but rather factors into decisions on a lower level, turning into the "hunch" you have about a certain route or even more generally a certain course of action. So unless there is a way to have a perfect representation of the city that is also less than a day or two old, it's not really a replacement for actually going through those streets.
  - gknoy 12y ago
    Does the test check the best way, or only knowledge of finding Some route? I could see someone learning the city topology with VR, and then using experience to learn congestion patterns.
- barrkel 12y ago
  They're normally on scooters. Stuck in traffic is a very rare occurrence for someone on a scooter.

dkopi 12y ago

Infamous would be a much better description than legendary.

bmsleight 12y ago

Check out the run calling halfway down the article (Matt McCabe “calls-over” a long run)

blahedo 12y ago
Yes, and notice how much of the run involves "forward" calls---that's when you stay on the same road, but it changes name. It's mindblowing. If you want to track the run (it's accurate!) the starting point is right next to this node in OSM: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/279219489 http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/279219489

jes5199 12y ago

GPS routing is awful compared to a person who knows their way around a city. Uber drivers in hilly cities like San Francisco never, ever think to avoid climbing right up and down the steepest hills - the algorithms don't tell them not to, there's no traffic and it's not a low speed limit, it just sucks for other reasons. I had a driver last week who had never heard of Valencia St, and then misunderstood the GPS voice and accidently got on the freeway, getting us stuck in cross-bay traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get to the next exit. Of course I rated that ride 5 stars, because I'm not actually a psychopath ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-are-we-actually-rating-when-we-rate-other-people/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar... ) It's going to be a long, long time before we put anything approaching the depth of information that years of experience brings into our algorithmic routing systems. And startups are structurally disincentivized from trying to, anyway.

matthewmacleod 12y ago
That's really interesting. I wonder if there's scope and technology for a collaborative constraint-based solver that finds more effective routing for cities.
custardcream 12y ago
Well I drive around London a lot during the day time (inside CC zone) and Google Maps is pretty damn good on Android. I did a few years in taxis but owning a car that is CC exempt is cheaper including parking in NCP holes. Part of the reason its cheaper is after some experience driving around the city, you realise that at least half the taxi drivers are taking the piss. "the knowledge" is imminently replaceable by technology and is merely a party trick IMHO.
- jedc 12y ago
  It's not completely replaceable by technology. Once I had gotten a text from my wife as to where to meet her for dinner with friends. She didn't know the restaurant name, and had gotten the street name wrong. I just read the text to my London black cab driver, he asked me: "Did you mean XXX restaurant on [correct street name]?" (Note: there were multiple restaurants on the street). And sure enough, he was 100% correct. That's the day I learned to really respect drivers with The Knowledge.

conorh 12y ago

I would take a London taxi for the same reason that I'd read a paper book, for the experience, not for the result. The Knowledge is such a wonderful anachronism, and I hope that it can co-exist in some form with new services such as Uber and Lyft, but outside of protectionism I can't see any reason why it should - technology is nearly good enough now to replace it, and in some cases probably better. If it does continue to exist I can't imagine that market for people with the Knowledge will be enough to support the number of London taxi's that are on the streets now.

gutnor 12y ago
Most of the black cab I have taken have a also a GPS, so that's not like it is an exclusive type choice, and I wonder why people assume so. Even connected GPS are fairly bad at finding the shortest way if it means running in the other direction for a while and that happens quite often in London and Black Cab driver are quite good at making those kind of info just looking at their gps traffic info. The knowledge is a very useful tool, and in any city, a driver with good local knowledge is what you are looking for, regardless the middleman you use. Technology is only making the trade off of using amateur bearable, and in reality the real value of Uber and others is from the rest of the service provided. A bit like in your example - if you had to go to the bookstore to load a new book on your reader and it could only hold one book at a time, the technological superiority of even the latest generation of kindle would not make them go pass novelty items. Real value of ebook comes from the rest of the services you get from it and that's the reason why even with the shit reading experience, the first gen kindle was a success. The anachronism here is the segregation between black cab and minicab in London and the services the legal restrictions on the services they can offer. Although, IMO, that is not nearly as bad in London as people on HN experience in other places in the world. Black cab are meant to hailed on the street, now, without booking, review or other overhead by drunk people and tourists. Some licensing restriction to make sure you get a basic level of service in those circumstances is probably acceptable. If you have time to plan a bit in advance, there is Uber and plenty of competitors that have always been freed from the restrictions.

goatforce5 12y ago

Several times I had London cabbies stop the fare meter when I showed them (the same) short cut near where I lived. "No, don't go to the lights, turn down this lane!". All of them had their brains explode that there was a better way that saved about 200 meters and 30 seconds of travel. I'm not sure if there's an (unwritten?) rule that you get the rest of the fare for free if they're taking you a long way, but there was no resentment from them. All of them were incredulous there was a better way to do it. (Just looked at Streetview. There's nothing special about that lane that should make it a big secret. I guess it must have been No Entry/One Way/something and changed recently before my journeys.)

justincormack 12y ago
It is honour. Have had free trips because they didn't know a street in eg Swiss Cottage. It encourages repeat business.
- peteretep 12y ago
  25% of cab drivers had no clue where Gaskin St was, and I never had any suggest they were going to knock off the fare in three years...
rahimnathwani 12y ago
Does google maps know this route?
- goatforce5 12y ago
  Just checked, and yes it does. As I said, the route seemed really obvious to me. It was a quicker way to get from Kingsland Rd to Hackney Rd, so it was two major roads in central London. The short cut involved taking a narrow laneway, and i'm guessing something about that lane changed meaning it had only just become accessible. I also had cabbies turn off the meter late at night. I'd light up a cigarette (back when that was allowed), they'd ask if I cared if they lit up too, and once a guy said "Ahhh, I was heading your way anyway" and he turned off the meter. I lived in East London surrounded by cab drivers, so maybe they were being neighbourly.

solistice 12y ago

Having lived for some time in Beijing, where a "black cab" is a slang term for an unmetered private cab or metered cabs running with the meter off, reading the part of the article detailing "black cab advocacy" and "black cab protests" turned into more of a mental challenge than I would like to admit.

mtalantikite 12y ago

Here in Brooklyn car services seem to have lost the ability to navigate the city in just a few years. You used to be able to call a car service, have a car show up in 5 minutes, and they'd get there with just the cross streets. Now most often the first question is "what's the address so I can put it into my GPS", even with metered cabs. I've been yelled at for asking to take routes that the GPS doesn't suggest, even though I know at 3pm on a Tuesday we shouldn't be on the BQE. Or there's construction on Flatbush and we should go around it. I don't think we need a test quite like London's, but basic knowledge of neighborhoods and major intersections should be required. At least until we get those self driving cars that can optimize routes in real time.

danielweber 12y ago
My (limited) experience in Brooklyn is that taxis don't know addresses, they know cross-streets.
- mtalantikite 12y ago
  Yes, that's generally true with all of NYC, we always give cross streets as reference. I'd never expect anyone to know just based on address number.
shittyanalogy 12y ago
There are more people than ever in Brooklyn and they are more affluent demanding cabs around an otherwise poorly navigable borough. Some days, weekends and inclement weather, they can't keep up with demand and it takes forever to get a goddamn cab. Also New Yorkers have a "just want" attitude and would rather have rude, un-knowledgeable cabbies than less cabbies. And who cares if the cabbie doesn't like you. It's your right to demand an exact route as long as you're staying in the city. Tell him you're calling 311 and don't tip.

chuckcode 12y ago

As automatics routing software takes into account the extra information of traffic history with real time existing traffic conditions computers will do just as well or better than "The Knowledge Boys". Currently local experience with traffic is very useful, but as that information becomes available electronically and much more comprehensively the playing field will tilt even more to automated analysis. UPS already uses their combined driving history to save millions of man hours and millions of tanks of gas[1]. I have to imagine that Google and others can do even better with all of us implicitly telling routes and existing traffic conditions. Be interesting to know if Google is doing a/b testing with their routes in maps like they do with their website UI. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/ups-uses-big-data-to-make-routes-more-efficient-save-gas.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/ups-uses-big-data-t...

piyush_soni 12y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they gradually start losing cab drivers.

macieka 12y ago

Even though in London black cabs are significantly more expensive than uber x, they are a much better experience. I often order an Uber in the pretty busy area of Soho, only to stare at the app for 10 minutes as my driver turns into dead end streets time and time again trying to get to my location. I don't really understand why this is happening, because they usually have both a separate GPS and the uber app that should display driving directions. Black cab drivers know so much more about the city it's not even a contest. I have almost totally switched to using Hailo in London for that reason.

rbobby 12y ago

The "knowledge" is a very valuable skill/infoset. The actual driving and interacting with customers is much less valuable. So maybe the way forward is to separate the two skills. Folks with the "knowledge" could act as centralized route planners. The can provide many more routes in the time they could drive one (i.e. a single cabby driving might do 1 call every 20 minutes... but could easily do 10 route plans in the same time). Essentially when someone asks the minicab driver "take me to X", the driver relays this information to a black cab driver at a desk who sends back a custom route. With GPS to identify the starting point and VOIP (via wireless) this could be as easy as a driver using a traditional radio (press the mike button, speak the destination, and viola the route appears on a dash mounted map along with spoken instructions). Very much like the existing examination question/answer format. Maybe you would also need to rotate the route planners out as drivers 1 week out of 4 so they keep up with the "knowledge".

jively 12y ago

London Black cabs are overpriced, and there's no market check that stabilises price, as much as I respect the institution of "The Knowledge", you are still bound by the need to trust your driver, and many are just opportunistic. The Knowledge may make for better navigation, but as a customer, the amount of times it actually comes in useful (road works, accident, awkward route) is very low, 90% of journeys are straightforward. It certainly doesn't justify the 50%-100% price increase for the privilege of hailing the cab on the street vs. by pre-booking, especially when most of the time the route you are taking is short (no Londoner in their right mind would use a black cab for a long journey, unless they have money to squander or it's so late at night that you're desperate) The likelihood of getting any real value out of the knowledge when taking a cab in London is very low, and the fact I need to pay for idling in traffic with an un-capped fare potential on top of jacked rates just makes for a terrible proposition. As a consumer, there's just no value in that, and Black Cabs need to evolve or compete themselves back into relevance, bring on Uber, Lyft, Wheel and any other newcomers. Source: 14 years of being a grumpy Londoner.

nwp90 12y ago

A lot of people seem to miss the point that the Knowledge also acts as a deterrent to bad behaviour by proper cabbies - they have too much invested in their license to be likely to throw it away lightly.

rahimnathwani 12y ago
It's not about how much they have invested; this is a sunk cost. One cannot change the past. It's about the future revenue they would forego if they were to lose their licence.

Evolved 12y ago

I'm a fan of the 3 yes/no question survey. It doesn't take much longer than rating 1-5 unless you want to add comments. Would you use our service again? Was there anything we could have done better? (+comment) Would you recommend us to your friends and family? Also, let's not forget how people sometimes lose their ability to be objective when they're upset which may manifest itself in the form of a less than 5 star rating for a driver that made 1 small error or said something innocuous that we took offense to.

igonvalue 12y ago

I thought the coolest fact about the Knowledge is that it actually induces observable physical changes in brain anatomy. > She has discovered that the posterior hippocampus, the area of the brain known to be important for memory, is bigger in London taxi drivers than in most people, and that a successful Knowledge candidate’s posterior hippocampus enlarges as he progresses through the test. It seems that, like most things, there might be a tradeoff involved. According to this paper[0], > However, they were significantly worse at forming and retaining new associations involving visual information. We consider possible reasons for this decreased performance including the reduced grey matter volume in the anterior hippocampus of taxi drivers... [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670971/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670971/