Chatty cabbies and drivers who refuse service are New Yorkers’ top complaints about taxis, newly released data show.
Passengers who used the Report A Taxi smartphone app to report complaints over the last four months were most commonly angered about drivers who refused to take them to their destinations, according to statistics obtained by The Post.
Of the 814 passengers who used the app between December and March, 168 complained of on-duty cabbies refusing to pick them up.
Taxi drivers sometimes refuse service to riders who want to go to the outer boroughs or upper Manhattan.
The second-most common gripe was of hacks talking on cellphones.
Other common complaints were rude service and drivers’ refusal to let passengers pay with credit cards.
Forest Hills resident Camilo Ortiz used the app to report his driver, who talked on a phone the entire 25-minute ride from Manhattan to Queens in December.
“I know for a fact that talking on a cellphone, whether it’s hands free or not, increases the chances of a crash, so I didn’t want to be at risk so he could chat with his buddies,” Ortiz said.
Brian Baxter, of the tech firm Y INTERACT — the company that designed the app — said the tool will help passengers have a better ride.
“Report A Taxi serves to protect passengers and bring justice to anyone who’s been refused a ride or had a driver that paid more attention to their iPhone than to the road,” he said.
Riders can simply enter a driver’s medallion number or take a photo of it with a smartphone, select from a list of common complaints and fill out the data, time and location of the problematic trip.
The complaints are then reported to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.