Cabsplaining: A London Black Car Driver on the Uber Protest

On a day when London’s black cab drivers brought gridlock to the city center, Lee Cox was stuck with his black cab in a garage with a broken AC. But he’d be out there, if he could. “There’s nothing broken with the service as it’s been for a hundred years,” he says. “The thing the apps try to do, it’s like nailing jelly to the wall.” Services like Uber claim to be offering him more work, he says, but “there’s only ever a certain amount of work for black cabs in London.”

Cox isn’t afraid of technology. You can find him on Twitter, @jackcabnory, which he checks when stationary on a Samsung smartphone affixed to his dashboard. He has regular fares who hail him that way, posting a Twitter message on arrival at Heathrow, including @hughbonneville, the actor who plays the patriarch on Downton Abbey. Cox is also part of a group of about 500 cab drivers who use Twitter to share information in a loose way: overcrowded cab stands, clubs that just released a tide of pedestrians into the night, and other tips.