Cabbie gets blamed

**myst woman** · 07-29-2009, 10:25 AM

i just read this story where a family paid their cabdriver and then the guy got a three day suspension because the sleeping child the parents LEFT IN THE CAB was the cabby's fault.

God am i sick of complacent parents who expect the world to revolve around them.

I think the kid should be taken away from the parents for three days so the parents don't "forget" their kid next time.

what their stale snail mail was too important to get to after the trip?

Don't you wonder what kind of children these people will raise?

**tekz999** · 07-30-2009, 12:19 AM

Dumb parents. Feed them some IQ please.

**jberryhill** · 07-31-2009, 06:19 PM

That's something of a distortion of the story.

Nobody is saying it is the cabbie's "fault" that the child was left in the cab.

However, there are a couple of other considerations. The driver of any commercial vehicle is responsible for all passengers - even very dumb ones. Typically, cab drivers are not allowed to transport unaccompanied minors. Whether the parents are the dumbest people on earth, a cab driver should know that if three people get in at one end, then three people need to get out at the other end. If anything had happened to that child, the cab company would have been in extremely deep trouble.

There is no IQ test for hailing a cab, and of course half of the population is below-average intelligence, by definition.

That said - even very smart people can make dumb mistakes. Between parents, it is typically along the lines of "I thought you took the baby out of the stroller...."

**draggar** · 07-31-2009, 06:35 PM

Go watch the move Idiocracy and then get back to me.

**jberryhill** · 07-31-2009, 06:41 PM

I love that movie - it's got what plants crave.

Intelligence doesn't really work that way, though. The difference between people who are, in some sense, exceptionally intelligent, and not too bright, is really very marginal. Plenty of smart parents have not-too-smart kids, and vice versa. The variation, even within a single family, is pretty random.

It's not a question here of "whose fault is it". The cabbie has to follow regulations whether his passengers are idiots or not. Driving around without knowing someone is in the cab is not something he should be doing, regardless of how the situation got to that point. Insofar as he is the one being paid to do his job here, that is the endpoint of the analysis with respect to his role in the situation, and not go through life patting yourself on the back for something that you just happened to luck into.

One thing to avoid in your life as a relatively bright person is the assumption that the world is supposed to work to the advantage of bright people. It's the other way around. If you were gifted with exceptional intelligence, then you have the responsibility to use it positively for others, and not go through life patting yourself on the back for your particular accident of birth.