Woman says cabbie’s fine ‘a slap on the wrist’

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This article was published 06/04/2017 (3137 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 21-year-old Winnipeg woman who says she was propositioned for sex by a taxi driver during a ride home last November said an $850 fine to the driver is nothing more than a “slap on the wrist.”

Patricia Nosal said the Manitoba Taxicab Board recently ruled a Duffy’s Taxi driver had to pay the fine after it found the man made Nosal feel “uncomfortable and insecure” and ordered him to pay $850. She said she has been told the driver paid the fine and is back driving a cab.

“I just can’t shake the fact that an $850 fine is kind of just a slap on the wrist,” Nosal said Thursday.

“I’m very happy there’s some sort of mechanism in place that can hold these drivers accountable and for them to know that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable. The fact that they thought they could get away with something like this is kind of baffling,” she said. “Given that this is a recurring theme — there were many other stories like this — I feel like this is a bigger issue. Some sort of additional training, some ethics, was needed (for the driver).”

A spokeswoman from the Taxicab Board confirmed the driver of Nosal’s taxi was fined $850 for being “found in breach of the Taxicab Act and Regulation: making a passenger feel uncomfortable and insecure by directing another driver and his passenger to the location of the complainant’s home. He was also found in breach of using a cell phone while transporting a passenger and for not engaging the meter.”

She said a second driver was also found in breach of the Taxicab Act and Regulation for “referring a passenger to another taxi and used a cell phone while transporting a passenger” and was fined $250.

Nosal was a passenger in a Duffy’s taxicab on Nov. 6, 2016 at about 3:30 a.m. for a ride home after a night out with friends when the male driver asked her if she wanted “to make some extra money.”

She said she felt uneasy because it was obvious he was referring to sex.

“I just said, ‘That’s really not for me. I’m not that kind of person,’ ” she said.

When the driver eventually dropped her off at home, another taxi was already there. As she got out of her cab, a male passenger from the other cab came up to her. “He said, ‘I heard you wanted to make some extra money,’ and I said to my cab driver, ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on here, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but I am not interested,’ ” Nosal said.

Nosal said the incident was “frightening,” and she believes the two drivers and the passenger in the other cab had co-ordinated their arrivals.

Her parents were in the house so she said she hurried inside. Nosal said she immediately called Duffy’s but felt her complaint was not taken seriously. She said was told she was “wasting her time” and to call back on Monday.

She posted her experience on Facebook and, later that day, she had hundreds of shares, comments from numerous other women sharing similar experiences and the media picked up the story. An explanation a short time later from Duffy’s didn’t make sense, Nosal said.

She was told the driver of her cab said he was talking to a second driver who said he had a family emergency and asked her driver to pick up the second driver’s passenger. Her driver said the “make some extra money” comment was supposedly him repeating what the other driver had said to him in reference to making extra money for picking up the other passenger. There was no explanation as to why the passenger in the second cab also made a comment to her about making extra money.

She said the camera footage of her incident was reviewed but she was told more action could not be taken in her case because what the driver said to her could not be heard.

No one from Duffy’s responded to a request for comment by the Winnipeg Free Press.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca