Insecurity of Taxi in Bangkok

Is it safe to take a taxi in Bangkok?

As we can learn from all types of media that women were robbed, raped and worst than that sometimes murdered by taxi driver too. People taking taxi as their daily transportation is taking a risk that one day they might be a victim and who will be responsible for the safety of the passengers of taxi in our society. So we will go to see how taxi organization in Bangkok recruit taxi drivers to work and how they deal with the taxi drivers who break the rules?

In greater Bangkok there are two types of taxi. The first type is personal taxi come in yellow-green color which is under the control of Department of Land Transportation directly.

The second type is Taxi Cooperatives. Each Taxi Cooperatives look after company members that handle and responsible for taxi in different colors. Each company member let people who own their own cars to join the company by registering to be a member of the company.

How do they recruit taxi driver?

Taxi cooperative just only control company members that register incorporation with them. Recruitment of taxi driver is the job of each company. They screen taxi driver by looking at the physical characteristic of the applicant, they don’t have any strict rules. Taxi drivers working in each company have to pay deposit as security money in case they causes any damage to the company and cannot pay for it , the company would deduct the money from the security money. But most of the damages are car crash and the taxi driver doesn’t have enough money to pay.

Taxi drivers working in companies under Taxi cooperatives rarely robbed or raped passengers because they are controlled by the company members and the company members are controlled by taxi cooperatives. So each company owner is the most intimate person of taxi driver which is easier to take care than personal taxi. Personal taxis just have their own car and register with Department of Land Transportation then they can go to make money. Taxi drivers have to test for public driving license if they pass they can bring their public driving license to register.

Department of Land Transportation has nothing to do with the taxi drivers doing any harm to the passengers; it is a duty of policemen to implicate with them. Therefore, most of the harm happened with personal taxi because they have no control. If any injured passengers want claim they can claim with policeman and then the policeman will report to Department of Land Transportation for recovering damage.

However, Department of Land Transportation should have more regulations for control and standardize for both types of taxis. New technology such as GPS or radio center that being served by some taxi companies should be used more widely for protecting the safety of the passengers.