NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — The New York Taxi Workers Alliance laid flowers in Manhattan on Tuesday at the spot where a cabbie was found dead in his car last week—the third driver found this way in as many months.
The most recent driver—a man of Sikh faith who was father to 10-year-old twins—dropped passengers off near Seventh Avenue and Charles Street at about 5 p.m. on Friday, with his friends realizing that something was wrong when they couldn't reach him for hours. They traced his car to the West Village at about 11 p.m., discovering that he had been parked there since drop off.
While the NYTWA described the driver as "young and active," executive director Bhairavi Desai said that these deaths are raising concerns about the toll the job takes on drivers' bodies.
"There's so many drivers who have been talking about how they don't take care of themselves more; not because they don't want to, but because of the conditions of this job. They're just not able to," she told 1010 WINS. "Time is money, especially when you're paying for expenses out of pocket."
Before the discovery last week, the NYTWA said that 53-year-old Khalifa Siwa died alone in his parked taxi on the Henry Hudson with his insulin in his hand in August, and driver Richard Coulibaly died in his parked taxi overnight during a heatwave in July.
The union is calling for changes that would give cabbies more financial breathing room, including better access to healthcare and PTO.
