NEW YORK

Frustrated cabbies on Wednesday laid four coffins on the sidewalk outside City Hall, where they blamed the de Blasio administration for the recent suicides of taxi and livery drivers.

The hacks accused the city of allowing app-based ride services such as Uber and Lyft to expand unchecked and gobble up traditional drivers’ customers — which has led to desperation among cabbies and four suicides since December.

“This is not about numbers falling — this is about human lives now being lost,” fumed New York Taxi Workers Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai, standing beside four caskets signifying the dead.

“These are noble men,” she continued. “They deserve better, their families deserve better. The mayor and this City Hall needs to deliver.”

The latest suicide was that of cabby Nicanor Ochisor, who hanged himself in his Queens home March 16. Colleagues said he was driven to despair over the plummeting value of his taxi medallion.

The city-issued medallions were worth more than $1 million on the open market in 2013 just before ride-hailing apps burst on the scene, but now they are worth less than $200,000, as more riders and drivers switch from cabs to Uber or Lyft.

“I’ve been driving since 1985. The medallion was always supposed to be good money for retirement. Now it’s worthless,” said Naresh Kumar, 66, a yellow-cab driver. “We’ve lost 40 percent of our income since 2013. And the traffic is so bad that you get into your car and you can’t go anywhere.”

Added Desai: “It is a living nightmare.”

Drivers want the city to cap the number of ride-hail cars in the city and also hold them to similar rules and standards as cabs and black cars: annual operating fees, a dispatch base and vehicle inspections.

“We are looking for fairness. Competition is great, but [app-based services] must play by the rules,” said cabby Nino Hervias, 59.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission said it is “deeply saddened” by the suicides.

Councilman Steve Levin has reintroduced a failed 2015 bill that would cap the number of Uber and Lyft cars on city streets.

Councilman Ruben Diaz is planning a legislative package that would hold such vehicles to standards similar to black car services.

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 Coventry is to become the epicentre of the taxi world after it was announced the MetroCab will also be produced in the city.

The hybrid vehicle will roll off at the production line at a new CAD CAM Automotive (CCA) factory to be built somewhere in the city.

It means the MetroCab will join the London Electric Vehicle Company’s TX London taxi, which is being made in Ansty, with both zero-emissions taxis competing to be the cab driver’s vehicle of choice in London and around the world.

The MetroCab will be built at a new factory on the back of a £100m investment from CCA’s Chinese owners Red Sun Group.

CCA, which was founded in 1999, currently employs 220 staff at its Holbrooks Lane plant. The new complex will be developed at a different site in the city.

As well as producing the hybrid MetroCab on the Ecotive Vehicle Platform, Red Sun Group’s investment also represents a vote of confidence in the specialised work CCA does for growing Coventry car maker Jaguar Land Rover.

It provides lightweight aluminium bodyshells for Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicles Operations based in Ryton-on-Dunsmore.

The Ecotive Vehicle Platform on which the MetroCab is based is produced by Surrey-based firm Ecotive Limited.

Yang Shou Hai, president of Red Sun Group, said: “I have always been driven by applying new technologies to provide better products and reduce the impact on our environment.

“This is another strong step in Red Sun’s stated ambition to becoming China and the world’s pioneer in new technology, independent innovation and industrial models.

“This investment opportunity brings together highly skilled workers, and the application of market-leading technologies to provide highly efficient commercial vehicles with vastly reduced harmful exhausts.”

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 A Liverpool taxi driver, who forced a male passenger to perform a sex act as he drove, has failed in a bid to clear his name.

Married dad-of-two Khaldon Mohammed previously claimed that his customer initiated sexual activity but was found guilty of rape in January 2017 and jailed for six-and-a-half years.

The 31-year-old, of Gwendoline Street in Toxteth, took his case to the Court of Appeal last week but failed to have his conviction overturned.

Although Mohammed pleaded not guilty after the incident in 2015, he was convicted after a jury heard of the victim’s distress in the moments afterwards, when he called a friend in hysterics.

The court heard the passenger got into Mohammed’s taxi in 2015 after a night out, and was drunk but “not so drunk that he did not know what he was doing.”

The man told police that Mohammed had initiated conversation, but the passenger could not hear from the back so was invited to climb into the front passenger seat.

Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, said: “The usual banter took a strange and what is clearly now a sinister turn, because the defendant started to ask him about his sexual orientation and came out with the question ‘do you like d***?’”

He said the journey continued, before Mohammed “suddenly” unzipped his jeans, “pulled” the man’s head down and “forced him” to perform a sex act.

Mr Gibson said the driver pushed the victim away when they stopped at red traffic lights, because people were around, before pulling his head down again.

He said after Mohammed finished, the journey ended and the man got out and ran into his home.

His lawyers claimed at an appeal hearing that fresh evidence from another Liverpool taxi driver cast doubt on the safety of the jury’s guilty verdict

The other driver told of having picked up a male passenger - with the same name as Mohammed’s victim - and being offered oral sex as payment.

When shown pictures of the complainant in Mohammed’s case, he said he recognised him as the passenger who offered him the sexual favour.

But returning to court today to deliver their judgment, three top judges refused Mohammed’s bid to appeal his conviction.

Ruling on the case, Lord Justice Bean, sitting with Mr Justice Sweeney and Judge Anthony Leonard QC, said the new witness had only had a “fleeting glance” of his passenger.

And there had been a gap of at least 19 months between him picking up the man and being shown the photo of Mohammed’s victim.

The judge said: “Each of the three members of this court takes the view that the fresh evidence raises no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Khaldon Mohammed.”

The prosecution case was “strong”, based on lies by Mohammed in his police interview and the improbability of him allowing himself to receive oral sex “out of curiosity”.


He added: “The distressed state of the complainant very shortly afterwards made for a formidable case, even against a defendant of good character.”

The appeal was dismissed and the conviction upheld.

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BOLTON 

A TAXI driver accused of sexually assaulting a teenager passenger has insisted he did not touch her apart from moving her foot from his dashboard.

Giving evidence in his own defence on the third day of his trial at Bolton Crown Court, Ogato Koji told a jury: "I asked her to take it down. She didn't respond or anything but I pushed.

"At that point I'm very angry — we're in danger, I'm driving."

The court heard that the 19-year-old woman had been out with a friend in Bolton town centre in the early hours of February 2 last year and, at 4.40am, decided to go home.

Koji, a father-of-11,says he was waiting in Bradshawgate for a customer when the woman opened the door of his Toyota Prius and he thought she was the fare he was to collect.

Koji, who is originally from the Oromu community in Ethiopia, told the court that he asked if she was called Lee and she wrongly said she was.

He added that he could not check the booked customer's details on his Metro taxi screen because he had forgotten his glasses.

The prosecution claim that, after the woman told him she needed to get money to pay him from a cash machine, he told her she could pay "in another way".

He was said to have kissed her while at red traffic lights, put his hands on her thighs and pulled at her knickers, stopping the assault when the lights changed.

The car pulled into a petrol station where there was a cashpoint and Koji drove away after the teenager got out of the vehicle.

Chloe Fordham, prosecuting, suggested he left because he saw her using her mobile phone but he denied it, claiming that it was at that point that he realised he had picked up the wrong passenger.

The jury was read statements from the Oromu Community Association and the Imam at the Bolton mosque where he worships, in support of Koji, the latter describing him as "a very respectful man who treats others with kindness".

Koji, aged 55, of Cambria Square, Bolton, denies sexual assault.

The trial continues.

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