[decktech]

This is good advice, but it's never worked for me. I've never hailed a cab in which they didn't have the doors locked until you tell them where you want to go. I even had one cab speed off while I was still holding the door handle when I told him I just wanted to go five blocks south (in Chelsea, in the snow), I figured he though I was going to change my mind when I got in.

I don't take cabs anymore.

[n72]

I must be understanding what you're saying. I've taken thousands of cabs in NYC and only a hand full of times have I been required to tell them where I'm going before they've allowed me in the cab. Or perhaps it's a racial minority thing? I'm an upstanding looking white guy.

[acjohnson55]

Black guy here. I don't think I've ever been locked out of a cab that stopped in front of me until I stated my destination or had a cabbie refuse to take me home to Brooklyn or anywhere else. I do always make a point to get in the cab first.

However, I've had plenty of cabs mysteriously go "off duty" as they approach me. That's probably a much less risky way to avoid a trip that presumably leads to a less profitable/more dangerous destination statistically, due to my ethnicity.

[pavel_lishin]

I've never had a cab keep their doors locked when I waved one down; maybe the neighborhood matters?

(I live around 145th and Broadway; sometimes I take a cab after going out drinking, which probably means one of the villages, or thereabouts.

[Crake]

We're almost neighbors! Sort of. I live about 15 streets up.