I once wrote and published a piece on local e-hailing taxis which I titled Grab My Erse, but in truth the same drivers seem to all work for an average of three e-hailing operations. The likelihood, then, of a dodgy driver being with Grab is disproportionately larger as they’re by far the bigger firm. Please note how I take you the extra mile in order to be fair, just as e-hailing drivers take you that extra bit to a shop for change in order to collect their fare.
At the end of April I took an e-hailed car back from Paradigm Mall whose driver had a film playing loudly on his dashboard phone. It was lowly dangerous, especially in one of the world’s highest-ranking road death nations. I took a brief video of it – a video of a video, which I might drop here. If I don’t it’ll be because it might switch on the unhealthy, reactive parts of people’s brains. They might find it offensive or annoying.
A friend told me recently that she had a remarkably similar experience, all details matching save the car interior on our respective videos. That’s worse, to think that this problem may be widespread and bigger than many of us might have imagined. To dismiss it as a trend still leaves passengers in danger.
The car provider, the company, didn’t get back to either of us about these separate incidents, just as they didn’t a few years ago when I told them I thought one particular driver would surely kill someone with their chaotic driving.
Regarding my film-watching driver I was just so gobsmacked that anyone could actually do such a thing that my assertive mind was knocked for six, to use a cricketing analogy. This should only take place in the sort of B-movie these drivers would watch. Perhaps, to swing toward politics, it’s like meeting people from groups you never believed could actually exist beyond electronic spheres, such as Trump/Vance supporters or other extremists; when you suddenly find yourself in the same space you’re too shocked to know where to start.
My friend and I should have told those respective drivers to get stuffed. I mean, I thought taxidermy was when you stuff as many people as you can into an e-hailing taxi.
Before coming to live in Malaysia I could count the number of times I’d used a taxi on the fingers of two hands over a lifetime of around 50 years, and very nearly on one; taxis were monstrously expensive in Grey Britain until Uber, Bolt and the other e-hailing services arrived; by which time I’d left.
The number of times I’ve tried driving without any hands would not make it to the one finger I hold up in contempt for bad drivers – usually at zebra “crossings”. Another friend of mine took a ride with a driver who used the hands-free technique. If he was trying to impress her, he did, but not positively. If I counted the number of times drivers have gone to the wrong meeting point at the back entrances of malls and then had me charged for it, it would fly to more than a flurry of fingers.
Most of the time though, it all works quite well. During busy periods I have come to rely on Grab.
When I’m not in a hurry I try to give my custom to some of the other operators. I don’t want to disparage them much, as they represent some level of choice against Grab’s near-monopoly. Air Asia have improved their app recently, removing one instant automation that didn’t inspire confidence. It does ask me to log in more often than the other apps do, even though I have no credit link on there which hackers might exploit. Where they have coverage I find they’re as good as any of the others.
Gojo’s top-up procedure didn’t seem to proceed logically, or if it did I missed it; I am something of a technophobe. Indrive ceased trading before I could get their app to accept the no doubt poor quality photos of my ID they required to register with them. My Bolt app was stuck on a European currency, and now it’s changed to Ringgit Malaysia they seem to be outpricing themselves relative to the others at the same times of day. It's quite possible that their fares go up and down a lot as the other providers' do.
Across all the operators I’ve used there has been an alarming number of cars without working seat belts. In some the belt is stuffed down the back of the seat or beneath it. When I ask those drivers if they’ve just started that day’s shift and they reply that they’re closer to going home, it leaves me wondering why other passengers happily pay the ferryman rather than insisting on a working means of staying alive.
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Thanks for reading! I’d like to feature a few of Lawrence Pettener’s author pages here:
Kwailo Lumpur’s author page here at Newswav:
https://newswav.com/publisher/kwailo-lumpur-2170. All of my foodie book, Malaysia on Yer Plate is here, plus.
Poetry reviews at Asian Review of Books:
The Star newspaper, Malaysia:
Mohani Niza’s excellent The Culture Review features around 16 of my interviews and reviews: https://theculturereviewmag.home.blog/2021/08/23/lawrence-pettener-interviews-malaysian-poet-shirley-geok-lin-lim/
This post was produced on Temuan land.
Qing xia mien ping lun: Please comment below dan sila komen di bawah. In Tamil Go Ogle tells me that’s Kīḻē karuttu terivikkavum.
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