The imminent advent of ‘robo taxis’ may well be the final nail in the coffin of the London cab trade, suggests James Ford

By all accounts, a London cabbie’s lot is not a happy one. You may get to drive around the capital in one of the great transport icons (the black cab is up there with the red bus) but your efforts are sorely unappreciated. Popular public opinion is that you are either a racist, militantly anti-cyclist, or excessively curmudgeonly (and, often, all of the above). And if public hostility was not enough to deal with, there is ample evidence that being a cabbie is not just thankless but pretty unpleasant. In 2020 and 2021 alone the Met recorded 168 crime incidents against taxi and private hire drivers. According to a major industry survey, almost half (43 per cent) of London cab drivers report that they have had to deal with a

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