Taxi services or chaos on wheels?

It is said that if you want to know a city, befriend a taxi driver. They supposedly know the place inside out: The infamous, the very well known attractions, and those hidden from inexpert eyes. They can tell you stories of history, of people and places. I wonder, how much of this is applicable to our taxi drivers in Saudi Arabia?
Maybe the first thing we could point out about our taxi services is that they are in absolute chaos. No system to calculate fares, no system to track and distribute the service; nothing but a total mess. Not only this, taxi drivers are also known to be amongst the craziest of those who daily commute Saudi roads.
Now, let’s talk a bit about the level of service. First and foremost, the level of hygiene inside those cars is appalling. Very few drivers actually care about how dirty their cars are — and please do not get me started on the smell. In most cases, it is nothing less of a torturing experience to be canned in a car and suffer that strange mix of odors consisting of food, perfume, sweat and God only knows what else.
Then, there is the language barrier. Very few of those drivers are locals or can speak Arabic. So contrary to everywhere else in the world, locals have to adapt to the broken Arabic most of the taxi drivers here speak.
The matter becomes worse for foreigners who come to visit the country. English is rarely used or understood by most drivers, let alone other languages. I used to have a French friend who had to spend six months working on a project with me here in Jeddah. His public life, and transportation problems in particular, were a nightmare. He used to carry a piece of paper with the hotel name, the airport, and the office location, written in Arabic, English, and Urdu so he could use taxis and move around the city with ease.
The idea that those taxi drivers qualify to be part of the tourism experience of the country is almost impossible under the current circumstances.
I do not want to sound racist and too harsh on expat taxi drivers themselves. On the contrary, with all their faults and lack of proper training, they are part of the closest thing we have to a civilized form of public transportation.
Nevertheless, the type of pressure those drivers are under is unbearable. Most of them are indebted to car lords who usually own more than one taxi vehicle and demand daily high fees from drivers.
What remains in the drivers’ pockets barely allows them to survive plus sending whatever amount possible back home. No wonder they always drive in a hurry, breaking all possible basic driving rules, just to get that extra passenger for that extra fee before the end of the day. No medical coverage, no housing agreement, no weekends or vacations, and the crazy working hours to collect the requested fees are all adding to the same pile of problems taxi services have in this country.
Furthermore, I cannot miss this opportunity and not talk about women and driving. I believe there are no better witnesses to the lousiness of taxi services here other than women themselves. Those who are not blessed enough to hire their own drivers, have no other choice but to use taxis.
They have to endure all the nasty experiences of lousy services mentioned earlier, in addition to the possibility of being harassed by frivolous young drivers on the roads who seem to favor harassing women in taxis. This topic alone should be at the top of the list of reasons why women must be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia.
In a nutshell, it is a pitiful situation. We keep hearing promises of better taxi services, better systems, but we have not seen any improvement. What really strikes me is, that organizing taxi services does not seem to be a very complicated matter in large cities — we only lack true intention and swift implementation.
Taxi service systems are almost identical everywhere else in the world, we can learn from others’ experiences, and adapt them to our own needs. Yes, it is that simple!

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