Corkscrew Cabbie

The Hong Kong cab driver has one objective. OK, well, that's unfair. He has two objectives. One is he needs to take you to your destination. But is not his primary challenge.

The Hong Kong cabbie's main objective is to make you vomit. So he drives as if he's trying to shake your lunch out of you: pedal to floor, let go, pedal to floor, let go, floor, floor, let go, let go, brake.

If he has 50 meters of free space ahead, he accelerates like the A380 at takeoff. But after just 5 meters, he takes his foot off the accelerator completely (despite having another 45 meters of open road ahead). Then he glances at the rearview mirror to see if the passenger's head and neck are moving in a whiplash like motion. If they are, then he's off to a good start. Immediately he accelerates again and repeats jerk-head maneuver every 5 meters.

If there is an oncoming stop ahead (junction, traffic light, stopped bus), he tries to get to the stop in record time - then starts braking only when he's barely 2 feet from object at rest. However, he does so not with a giant squeeze on the brake pedal but in short rapid bursts. This makes the passenger jerk forward and backward approximately 2,500 times before coming to a dead halt. By this time, he's about halfway to meeting his main objective.

When it's time to move again, he reacts one step ahead. For example, when stoplight turns green, he accelerates immediately - even before the driver in front has stopped picking his nose. The reason for this is so that the cabbie is allowed one more jerk stop as his front bumper comes 0.1 mm within the rear end of the car in front. By doing this, he kills two birds with one stone: 1) Passenger gets thrown forward and backward within half a second, making him turn one shade greener 2) Cabbie gets excuse to honk at driver infront for 10 seconds.

By this time, lunch is about 3/4 way up. So he begins his foot exercises again: floor pedal, foot off, floor pedal, foot off, brake (for no reason), floor pedal, honk (for no reason). The only saving grace for Hong Kong passengers is that Point A is never too far from Point B. So normally, before the cabbie can successfully shake out that wonton noodle and tung yuen yong, passengers would have reached their destinations and clambered out to stable land - where they would lie on the sidewalk as understanding passersby try to feed them lemonade to ease the discomfort.

Because of HK's short distances, the cabbie rarely meets his main objective. Maybe that's why he's always so upset.