02 MAR 2017:  A newspaper item I read this week reminded me of a very funny story from a colleague back in my days at Strand Holidays in Toronto.

It was a bleak mid-winter in the mid 70’s when David Sharpe relocated from New York to Muddy York. As he laughingly related the story, on just his second day, it was snowing hard and blowing harder when he left the office to walk to his new apartment, which was only about five blocks away. Within a minute or so of head-down battling the elements and slush he realized he needed a cab, so spotting one out of the corner of his eye he flagged it down and quickly jumped in.

After brushing the snow out of his eyes he looked up to find not the expected cab driver but instead two uniformed Toronto police officers. The cops must have been equally surprised when their unexpected guest said, “Oh! Is this a police car? I thought it was a taxi.”

A highly embarrassed David hastily explained that he’d been living in New York where the only yellow cars on the road were taxicabs. The problem was that, back then, yellow was also the color of choice for Toronto police cars: It wasn’t until 1986 that they changed to white with red and blue accents.

The officers were apparently so amused at David’s utter embarrassment that they gave him a (free) ride back to his apartment.

The Wall Street Journal front page story that reminded me of David’s tale of long ago, had the headline, “Startled Motorists to Uber Drivers: Get Out of My Car!” And coincidentally, the opening story in the article also took place in downtown Toronto.

It seems a musical duo, Lexie Jay and Jon Fedorsen had pulled their band’s SUV over to the side of the street to check directions when, “two well-dressed strangers opened the hatchback and started loading their luggage into the trunk.” When Ms. Jay turned around and asked them what they were doing, they responded, “We’d like to go to the airport please.” Unlike my friend David 40 years earlier, this time the police were not involved but it was yet another case of mistaken identity – this time they thought the idling, unmarked vehicle was the Uber they had digitally dialed up.

The article went on to tell a number of similar tales, many where people actually climbed into the back seat of parked vehicles before the driver could tell them that he was not their Lyft or Uber ride. In one case a man waiting to pick up his wife and daughter was surprised when an elderly couple clambered into his car. When he told them he was not Uber the woman was clearly annoyed and said, “Well we’re really in a hurry, so can you take us anyway?”

Given such cases of rider befuddlement, maybe every ‘for hire’ vehicle being one color, whether it be black in London or yellow in New York, wasn’t such a bad thing. And adding to the innocent confusion, there are already the inevitable ne’er-do-wells willfully gaming the system and trying to capitalize on the confusion: I almost fell victim to one such effort in New York City last month.

It was an unpleasantly wet and windy midweek lunchtime when I emerged from Grand Central Station for a meeting about eight blocks away. I’d normally have walked but it was so miserable I decided to grab a cab instead. If you’ve ever been in NYC on such bad weather days however finding cabs is not that easy. As I battled to keep my umbrella from taking off while looking for a cab, a slightly battered, unmarked blue Toyota sedan pulled up alongside me. The driver lowered his window and said, “Hi, are you Justin?” When I replied in the negative he – a little too quickly – said, “Oh – I’m Uber and it looks like my ride blew me off. Where’re you going – jump in, I can take you.” Although suspicious, I told him that I was only going a few blocks and he said, “No problem that’ll be a flat surge rate of $25 – cash.”

This guy was certainly no Uber – he was simply on the make with his fake ‘lost rider’ pick-up line So despite the weather I semi-politely told him to take a hike and two minutes later found a cab that cost me $7.50. So Rider Beware: This kind of stunt is almost assuredly being practiced everywhere that ridesharing companies operate, which is now pretty much everywhere.

Other than that, I guess the moral to this story is, whenever possible hail a police car to get you from A to B. Not only is it less expensive but you know the driver is there ‘To Serve and Protect’ … Not something that can be said of many taxi drivers.