> You have cabs in NYC though - is it similar? In London the city controls the number of people that can operate black cabs, sets a standard tariff for fares and runs background and license checks. They can be hailed off the street (though also through some apps). And the drivers have to take "The knowledge"[1] a test which takes a few years to pass and means you can give the average cab driver any street name and they can get you there without a GPS.

In New York City, cabs that have medallions for street hails are referred to colloquially as "yellow cabs" and those which do not are referred to as "black cabs" (more properly: "livery cab"). Both yellow cabs and black cabs are regulated by the TLC, but black cabs are not allowed to pick people up off the street. Instead, you have to call the company to arrange a pickup (using a mobile app qualifies as "calling" for this purpose).

Uber, Lyft, Juno, etc. are all regulated in New York City as black cab services, which means they can't take street hails, but they operate otherwise identically to all other non-medallion black cab services, with TLC-licensed drivers.

Yes, but they aren't called "black cabs". An American wouldn't know what you meant; they'd understand "yellow cab" for that, depending on where they're from. And a "black car" service is something completely different, just to add to the confusion: they're limousines that you have to pre-arrange and can't simply hail on the street (though many of them try to cheat when they can).

In the US the title reads as "i am a black (cab driver)" rather than "i am a (black cab) driver". It is a race thing.

So London has "Hackney Carriages" ('black cabs') and minicabs. Black cabs are allowed to pick you up on-demand ('streetwork') or at taxi ranks (a designated place where you can expect to find multiple taxis just queued up waiting for you), minicabs you have to order. (Apps are making this a bit hazy, since ordering either via an app is just as easy).

The 'green badge' is your licence. There's green, yellow, and 'minicab' licences. Green is a citywide black cab, Yellow is constrained to one area, and minicab is no black cab, but dispatch-only.

'The Knowledge' is the test (and associated training) required to become a black cab driver. It's years worth of study. It's pretty much memorising an A-Z, but also knowing the best routes, at different times of the day, etc.

Three vehicles you can expect to see almost everywhere in London are red busses, black cabs, and scooters with a clipboard on the handlebars. The latter are drivers on their multi-year study of The Knowledge.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-te...

Pre GPS it was a requirement that cabbies have a massive list of places and routes through London memorized (that guy taking 3.5 years to study and pass the entrance exam is pretty par for the course).

There's a 1996 documentary on the process that's pretty interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvFKh_3evC8

Separately, this is the kind of non robots doing manufacturing automation that I think it's important to think about when we have discussions of future work, etc.

Because on the one hand it's stunningly fantastic that what used to take someone 4 years and a series of examinations to achieve is now included for a negligible cost in the pocket supercomputer (of 1996) that we all carry around in our pocket. But, it's also a huge shift for all these industries.

The Knowledge is a test black cab drivers have to take. They basically spend several years learning various streets and routes in the city [1]. It essentially turns them into a human GPS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom...

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge_(film)

It's a drama rather than a documentary, but highly recommended (IMO).

Agreed, "I drive a black cab" would be much clearer for us Yanks. I assumed it was a race thing too.