Now safety sealed for your protection.
No, this isn’t about excessive shrinkwrapping on the latest Scorcese DVD re-issue (though I supposed I could rant about that if I felt the need), this is about something that is just too Korean not to talk about.I sold my motorcycle last week since I’m getting ready to leave Korea and can’t really take it with me. (It’d probably cost more to ship it to Japan than it’s even worth.) Because of that, I’ve been taking the bus or cabs to and from work. Taxis are really cheap here, and let me be really lazy, avoiding even the walks to and from the bus stop. Most taxis are what you’d expect – just a regular car outfitted with a meter and a little light on top to let you know if the cab’s in service or not. Then there’s the cab I caught Friday night.
This one was a little different:
When I first got in the cab I thought, “what the hell is that for?!?” I’m familiar with cabs (in some parts of the US) that have the police car style shield to protect the driver, but this was a new one on me.The driver spoke about as much English as I do Korean, so it was hard to get an explanation. I thought it was to keep drunk (or otherwise unruly) passengers from assaulting him. I asked this more through pantomime than speech, which he probably found a bit worrying. But I did it with a questioning look on my face, so he got the idea that I was inquiring and not actually trying to hit him. (I also swung really slowly.) He pantomimed back that it’s meant to limit the driver’s movement, showing me that it prevents him from reaching into the back seat or turning around too much. The idea is apparently to force the driver to keep both hands on the wheel.
I guess telling them to do so just wasn’t doing the trick.
Seriously though, what had to happen for the cab company to embrace this idea? Are the drivers just that bad? Are they so easily distracted? I mean, have you ever seen anything else even remotely like this?
I have.
Ever taken a dog or cat to the vet and had them have to get stitches? You know that funnel the vet puts over their heads (the pet’s head, not the vet’s) to keep them from biting the stitches?
That’s what this is!
Only it’s attached to the headrest and not the cabbie’s head.The driver thought it was weird that I wanted to take a picture of his shield-thing and asked me why. I tried to explain that his shield was just as weird to me as my wanting the picture was to him, but I think he just thought I was crazy.Maybe so, but I’m not the one with a vet funnel attached to my headrest.
^.^