Taxi Driver Online

The downside of sat-nav: Helsinki’s new taxi drivers’ "knowledge" leaves room for improvement
A third of taxi driver wannabes fail their local knowledge exam at the first attempt

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 13.10.2011

The new taxi drivers’ knowledge of the capital area’s street layout leaves quite a bit of room for improvement. This is because the drivers rely too much on navigation devices.

“The GPS era started five or six years ago, and that has marked the last nail in the coffin of incompetence of Helsinki’s taxi drivers”, instructor Petri Silvennoinen from Helsingin Taksikoulu (“Helsinki Taxi School”) states bluntly.

What speaks volumes for the current malaise is the fact that in Helsinki’s leading taxi schools around a third of the students fail their local knowledge test at the first attempt.

So, why is fiddling with the sat-nav so tempting?

More and more people who are not that familiar with Helsinki’s layout - such as immigrants from other countries or students and jobseekers from elsewhere in Finland - aspire to become taxi drivers.

Immigrants also struggle with the language problem.

“To know Helsinki reasonably well requires the mastering of 3,000 to 4,000 titles: street names, places, districts, etc. This alone is comparable to a better-than-average knowledge of a foreign language”, Silvennoinen explains.

The local knowledge test can be re-taken, however, and there is a course available for the exam.

For example at the Helsinki Taxi School, the course lasts for only four days.

“In that space of time nobody can be turned into a fully-learned taxi driver.”

Few drivers have time to study the routes properly, even after having obtained their taxi licence, as for many of them driving a cab is just a temporary job on the side.

On the other hand, if the gadget tells you where to drive, does it really matter whether you know all the streets or not?

“A couple of letters’ difference in the spelling of the address may mean ten kilometres on the map. The technology is quite advanced, yes, but one should still not trust it blindly”, explains senior inspector Pasi Parviainen from the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (Trafi).

Executive director Arto Marttinen of Helsingin Taksiautoilijat ry, the association of the taxi drivers in Helsinki, adds that knowledge of the city is an indication of the driver’s professional competence. Also, sometimes the maps in the navigation devices may be out of date.

Customers waiting for a taxi in downtown Helsinki have a more relaxed take on the subject.

“As a rule the drivers do find the destinations. Having said that, in Malminkartano, where I used to live, there were some addresses that the drivers struggled with”, explains Kirsi Vesterinen while waiting for a ride in Kamppi.

“I know my own neighbourhood so well that if the driver has difficulties I can lead him in to the destination”, another taxi customer reckons.


Source; http://www.hs.fi/english/article/The+do ... 5269702949

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