After claiming that tens of thousands of taxi drivers had cheated passengers by switching their meters to the out-of-town meter rate, the Taxi and Limousine Commission chairman said today that a “fairly significant number” of these incidents resulted in no additional charges and that they were most likely “simple mistakes” resulting from cabbies trying to shut off their meters. Though this finding is based only on a two-month sample of GPS data, which means there is still the possibility of “significant fraud,” taxi drivers took the chance to revel in their perceived innocence, alleging the commission acted irresponsibly in releasing its initial report. “We have been vindicated,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. [NYT]
