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He had a string of traffic violations, took off a tourist’s foot in a horrific Midtown accident last Tuesday, then told The Post that he has no business being a cab driver: “I need a more suitable job,” Mohammed Faysal Himon said. But as of Friday, the 24-year-old hack was anxious to get back to work.
That may happen.
If no criminal charges are brought against Himon — and reckless drivers, as long as they’re sober, are rarely charged — the TLC says they’ll do nothing. “If the police department doesn’t issue charges, there is no jumping-off point for us to take action,” says a TLC spokesperson.
Had Himon’s cab not remained impounded as of Friday, the TLC says, he could have been back on the road, picking up fares.
How is this possible? Don’t look to the city agencies or departments involved: Ask the TLC and they’ll tell you it’s up to the DMV and the NYPD, and the DMV will tell you it’s up to the DA.
Meanwhile, there are only 29 members of the NYPD’s Accident Investigation Squad for all of Manhattan — 10 were added just this March, after pressure from victims’ advocates and the City Council.
But unless those officers witness the collision as it happens, they won’t press charges. And without charges, the DMV can’t add points to a license. And without points . . . surely, you see where this is going.
Even when a cabby does hit the 7-point limit — which Himon did months before he crashed into 23-year-old British tourist Sian Green, who had half her left leg amputated following the crash — it’s up to the TLC to write up either a $1,000 fine or a 30-day suspension. Which they finally did, last Thursday — they said the computer ate their homework. Still, that’s all they can do. Deciding whether to impose a fine or a punishment at all is handed off to the ironically named agency OATH (Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings).
Consider these incidents:
Nov. 9, 2011: A cyclist is struck and knocked unconscious by a cab driver at the Hudson River Greenway and 43rd Street. No criminal charges were filed.
April 4, 2012: A cyclist is struck and killed by a livery cab driver on Greenpoint and Borden venues. No criminal charges were filed.
April 14, 2012: 5-year-old Timothy Keith is struck by a cab driver in Cobble Hill and dies three days later from his injuries. No criminal charges were filed.
April 30, 2012: Dan Fellegara, 29, is struck and killed by a cabbie at Sixth Avenue and Watts Street. No criminal charges were filed.
Feb. 27, 2013: Amy Fass, fifty-something, is hit and dragged 40 feet by a cab after attempting to cross W. 181st Street and Haven Avenue. No criminal charges were filed.
Over the past 15 months, New York City cab drivers have killed eight pedestrians. What became of each of those drivers? The TLC says they have no idea — they don’t know who any of these cab drivers are or whether they’re still driving taxis.
The TLC can’t even explain what happened in a previous accident caused by Himon: That one is listed as “a passenger with injury,” but when it happened, who the victim was, and how severe the injury was are details lost, if ever recorded.
“If David Yassky, the leader of the TLC, has no power — which I find hard to believe — I’m certain that the city of New York can find a way to solve this,” says Caroline Samponaro, a director at the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. “We’re talking about the right to operate a New York City taxi cab.”
It doesn’t take much to earn that right: just a clean drug test, a valid driver’s license and 80 hours in class. In London, it takes three years for a cab driver to obtain a license, and it’s not just an intimate working knowledge of city geography that’s required; aspiring drivers must have clean criminal records and pass a character evaluation.
When was the last time you heard of a London cabby jumping a curb, crashing into a pedestrian mall and maiming tourists with no consequence, let alone texting while driving?
When one Post employee took a cab in Brooklyn recently, the driver had his cellphone attached to the dashboard — and was video chatting with his family abroad.
For a city whose steadily-declining crime rate is most often attributed to the “broken-windows” theory — the idea that clamping down on small crimes keeps larger ones from occurring — there is no similar application for our cabbies. How many times have you sat in the back of a cab, in astonishment or horror, as your so-called drivers take phone calls, speed, switch lanes compulsively, get lost, run red or yellow lights, or erupt in full-on road rage while you hope their target has no weapon? And we riders are left with no other option than to complain to the sclerotic, clearly overburdened TLC.
Early Friday morning, another cabby jumped a curb and crashed into scaffolding just 12 blocks south of where Green was hit. That driver had gotten into a road-rage war with yet another cabby; they were hustling over a fare at 1:30 in the morning. “Thankfully, no one was on the street at that hour,” said an NYPD source. “Or it could have been a lot worse.”
The NYPD has announced that the investigation into this week’s accident is ongoing, which shocks Councilman Peter Vallone, chair of the Public Safety Committee.
“That’s a first!” Vallone says. “For the 12 years I’ve been in office, the NYPD has not been prosecuting reckless driving. I’ve spoken to police. They want to do this. They just don’t have the resources.”
Last Friday, after holding a self-pitying press conference, Himon pled guilty to his TLC-issued summons and took a 30-day suspension. But without a centralized system and protocol for dealing with cabbies who have maimed and killed, and true transparency for the people of New York, what happens to the next reckless cabby — and what recourse his victim will have — is a guaranteed mystery. Just ask the TLC.