For Immediate Release:  May 23, 2010

Mohammad Chowdhury says he and his friends are driving in a motorcade to Albany on Tuesday morning because maybe if a law existed prior to March 28th, 2010 he would have been spared from a vicious slash to the neck that left him with 18 stitches.  “I know how lucky I am to still be alive.  Maybe my next brother won’t be lucky.  We need Albany to pass a law and not leave us helpless,” said Mr. Chowdhury.  The New York Taxi Workers Alliance is organizing the motorcade to push for the passage of the Taxi Driver Protection Act.

Introduced by Assemblyman Rory Lancman and State Senator Eric Adams, the Act would classify assaults on drivers as felonies and require a warning sign inside taxis, similar to the stickers in buses and subways.  Drivers will hold a send-off rally in the morning before lining up to drive in unison to the capital.  Albany still has to hold Committee hearings before the bill reaches a general vote.  There are currently 23 sponsors.  Other states, including California and Illinois, already prosecute crimes against drivers as felonies and states such as Pennsylvania require warning signs.

Joining Mr. Chowdhury will be Mamnun Ul Haq, a veteran driver who co-founded the union in 1998, who was stabbed in the back with a ten-inch hunting knife, glazed on both sides, by a passenger in 2005.  Mr. Haq says the physical pain comes and goes but the mental terror never leaves you.  “You keep looking behind you and around you all the time.  You don’t ever feel the same again when you get back behind the wheel and just try to do your job,” he said. There has been no arrest in the case.

Neeru Singh’s assailant was caught after five of her friends, overhearing the struggle and her screams for help on the cell phone, went off-duty and drove to the location to apprehend the woman who had choked and assaulted their friend after calling her racial slurs and pounding in the car half-way through the ride in 2008.  “We are serving hundreds of people everyday and we are collecting tax for the MTA.  We are providing a very good service to the city. They should protect us.”

"Taxi drivers are thirty times more likely to be killed on the job than other workers, and New York City houses the largest taxi driver industry in the nation, said Assemblyman Lancman (D-Queens), chair of the Assembly Subcommittee on Workplace Safety and author of the Taxi Driver Protection Act.    “These men and women bravely perform a vital service for our state and they deserve our respect and protection.  It is time to pass the Taxi Driver Protection Act and make assaulting a taxi driver a felony."

NYTWA says the real number of incidents is higher than official statistics because most incidents go unreported by drivers, but the cases that do come forward indicate high violent crimes.  “The idea that a working person is facing the possibility of being choked, stabbed, struck with a weapon, or left permanently injured or killed is just unacceptable.  Albany can make this happen quick and unless it does, more blood will be shed by hard working taxi and for-hire-vehicle drivers,” said Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

Abubakar Abdallah, a victim of car jacking and an assault that left his nose fractured and head and face wounded on April 23rd, says his message is simple.  “I want the blood that I shed and that of all of my brothers and sisters to have meaning and not be ignored.”

Click here for PDF of press release