No Fare: NYC Cabbies Protest GPS Plan

The decision by NYC's Taxi and Limosine Commision to place global positioning systems will be good news to some and bad news to others. Cab drivers are upset becasue they don't want the TLC knowing how they're using the cabs when off-duty. Passengers may be thrilled because they will no longer have to give detailed directions to drivers who, generally speaking, do not speak fluent English. I understand that people come to New York City from all over the globe, and that driving a taxi must be a 24-hour-a-day job in order to turn a profit for the holder of the medallion (the legal right to drive the cab), which sometimes leads to a bit of outsourcing to friends/family in order to keep the car on the road. However, such a job is communication-intensive, and, in practice, requires a fairly good knowledge of the city streets. The latter is most definitely lacking in the overwhelming majority of cab drivers, many of whom quaked in fear at my requests for a Queens-to-Brooklyn journey.  Considering that I've had to give cab drivers directions to such out-of-the-way Manhattan locales as Penn Station and Brooklyn's Borough Hall, perhaps a GPS system isn't such a bad idea.