Mexican taxis: kidnapping, security and a question of identity

Mexican taxis have a bad reputation. Guidebooks are littered with stories of kidnappings and extortion, and unfortunately the reputation is founded. The streets are still regularly gridlocked with the city’s trademarked green and white Beetles and when you clamber inside, there’s a sense of many more risks.

Maybe it’s the lack of seat belts, dented bodywork, engines a few hundred thousand miles past their best, lack of front passenger seat, or just the way they’re driven – it makes every journey an adventure. But getting some local advice, it seems like there’s two types of taxis – the real and the fake. And it’s the fake ones where the serious risks are concentrated.

“Never get in if the number is scratched off the side of the door” explains a friend who’s been living in Mexico City most of her life. “Every taxi has a big number on the outside that’s part of the registration – the dangerous ones will have it rubbed off in some way.”

It’s a best workaround to a messy problem: if sandpaper and a few pesos of paint are all that’s between the true and false taxi then there’s clearly no real solution. If identity is the bedrock of safety, and that open to manipulation, then surely there will be a smarter solution?

My money’s on the electronic tagging of the taxis. Fit each taxi with an encrypted key, give the Federal Police access to the identities as part of the licensing and then any police car at any time will know who the real owners and drivers are. Create a culture of random checks, and maybe, just maybe, it will become too awkward for the bad guys.