For most taxi drivers, it would seem, the big talking point is not who they had in the back of their cab, but what was left behind.
London’s black cab drivers have revealed details of the remarkable collection of lost property that they find on their back seats.
One man abandoned his drunken girlfriend asleep and told the cabbie that he was leaving her as a tip. Another driver was lumbered with a man wearing only underpants. Other taxi drivers in the capital have reported finding a machinegun, an antique telescope and a bag of diamonds worth £100,000 on the rear seats of their cabs.
London emerged as the quirkiest and most forgetful place from the survey of 2,000 cabbies in 11 cities around the world.
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The research was primarily aimed at assessing the quantities of business equipment lost in taxis daily. The survey suggested that, in the past six months alone, 54,872 mobile phones, 4,718 handheld computers, 3,179 laptops and 923 computer memory sticks were left in London cabs.
But the good news for the regular taxi user is that a huge amount of property was swiftly returned by the honest cabbie.
London cabbies emerged as a particularly honest bunch, with 96 per cent of phones being returned by drivers and 97 per cent of lost laptops.
Many drivers said that they chased after passengers, especially with laptops. But one cabbie who ran after a passenger with a “very large suitcase” was told that its owner did not want it returned; on further examination it turned out to be packed with pornographic material.
The survey was carried out by Pointsec, a company that specialises in security for mobile devices. Peter Larsson, its chief executive, said: “This survey shows that no one is infallible and looking at this survey’s findings you look to stand a pretty good chance of losing a mobile device in a cab or indeed any public place.”
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Richard Massett, of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, said: “All sorts of things do turn up in the backs of cabs. Laptops, phones, umbrellas and briefcases are probably the most common but we do get wooden legs on occasion and I know the story of the diamonds is quite correct.”
Mobile phones
Number of phones lost in taxis in six months:
London 54,872
Bombay 32,970
Sydney 6,440
Washington DC 6,102
Berlin 6,100
Oslo 3,640
Helsinki 3,023
San Francisco 2,754
Frankfurt 1,647
Munich 1,485
Stockholm 1,192
Source: Pointsec Global Taxi Survey