Cellphone footage of an encounter between a cab driver and a passenger has reignited the fierce and ongoing debate between the province’s taxi industry and the British Columbians who depend on it.
“We were on the phone with police when, out of nowhere, about six other cab drivers showed up,” Julie Wazny said of what she describes as a terrifying customer experience last weekend.
“I noticed that the cab driver at some point took a turn off the normal route that I take home. And I asked him why he was taking a different route, and why he was going that way, to which he got even more aggressive and pulled over the cab and turned the cab off.”
WATCH: Burnaby woman shares frightening experience during a Yellow Cab ride. Sarah MacDonald reports.
Wazny, a Burnaby-based realtor, contacted Global News with cellphone footage of the encounter that occurred early Saturday morning. She says what began as a dispute with a Yellow Cab driver over his choice of route from Vancouver’s downtown core to Burnaby ultimately ended with a swarm of taxi drivers surrounding her and two friends, who were riding in the cab with her.
“We’re scared,” one of the women can be heard saying on the cellphone footage as one of the drivers begins to approach her, appearing to take issue with being recorded without his consent.
“There’s a bunch of cabs around us. We’re scared.”
Now, the driver at the centre of the province’s latest cab controversy is sharing his side of the story.
“It’s about my safety. That’s why I walked out of the car,” said the driver, who asked not to be identified.
In the cellphone footage, he is seen turning off and exiting his cab — with his passengers still inside — near Clark Drive and East 4th Avenue.
LISTEN: More bad cab stories from Vancouver
At this point, Wazny alleges the driver became verbally aggressive.
“He got very aggressive with us,” she said. “And I asked him not to speak to me like that.”
But the driver says Wazny and her companions made him feel unsafe.
Both he and Wazny confirm that up to eight other Yellow Cabs arrived on scene, with their drivers also exiting their vehicles. Wazny and her friends perceived the presence of the drivers — all of them men, in this case — as an intimidation tactic.
“It was terrifying. It was—the experience leading up to when the cabs got there was terrifying on its own,” she says. “But then, as three women in the middle of the night, just wanting a safe ride home. To be surrounded by other men, and intimidated? It was completely terrifying.”
But Yellow Cab insists what Wazny witnessed was simply standard company protocol.
“We’ve had drivers that have had knives pulled on them,” company president Kulwant Sahota said. “We’ve had drivers that have had guns pulled on them. The first priority of all these drivers is to make sure that the driver is OK, they’re safe.”
As it turns out, the company’s dispatch operator had also called police at the driver’s request at around the same time Wazny and her friends did.
“If you call the police, the police may take some time to come,” Sahota said.
Officers eventually arrived on scene, and the dispute was settled civilly—meaning a formal police report was never filed. But Vancouver police are also now weighing in on what was captured on camera prior to their arrival.
“There is power in numbers. That can be intimidating,” Const. Jason Doucette said.
Other taxi video from Global News:
“These are professional drivers, who are often faced with very difficult situations. Not every situation requires the immediate attendance of drivers, or police. But I think it’s important to have a safeguard in place.”
In this case, Wazny had a safeguard of her own in place: the husband of one of her friends arrived to drive the women the rest of the way home, after Wazny agreed to pay a reduced fare.
Both sides agree that, in this dispute, the money was secondary.
“I think with all of all the issues in society right now, with women feeling uncomfortable and coming forward — we’re entitled to say we’re uncomfortable, and come forward,” Wazny explains.
She says her negative experience has reaffirmed her convictions that British Columbia should introduce more competition to the conventional taxi market, in the form of ridesharing and ride-hailing. The province has said that will not happen until at least 2019.
For his part, the driver has a very different perspective. He calls his experience an example of the dangers professional drivers in Metro Vancouver face on a daily basis.
“We have families, too. Staying at home. Waiting for us,” he says of the late night shifts he and his colleagues often work. “And we don’t need somebody harming us.”
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