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Before They Can Drive a Taxi, London's Cabbies Have To Commit the City To Memory in a Rigorous Test Called the Knowledge (cnet.com)
In their fight against Uber, London's taxi drivers claim a distinct advantage: They must forgo GPS and navigate the huge city entirely from memory. CNET: Put in place in 1865, the Knowledge exam requires cabbies to navigate between any two points in central London without following a map or GPS. It can take four years to learn the information and pass a series of stringent oral tests. It's a grueling process unmatched by any training taxi drivers have to face anywhere else, and it's the most arduous thing Pearson's [Editor's note: a driver; used as anecdote in the story] ever done. "My uncle was a cab driver and he encouraged me to give it a go," he said. "But I still didn't realize how hard it would be."
Despite the difficulty of mastering it, cabbies proudly defend the Knowledge as a critical part of their job, something technology can't replace. They say it sets them apart from ride-hailing services like Uber, whose drivers don't have to learn the Knowledge, and they believe it allows them to deliver a superior level of service. But ever since mapping apps arrived on phones and GPS-wielding Uber drivers exploded into London in 2012, the Knowledge has faced a volatile future. Should cabbies have to spend years of their life memorizing every inch of London when they can simply punch in a destination on a screen and be guided? Absolutely, say the drivers I spoke with.
Despite the difficulty of mastering it, cabbies proudly defend the Knowledge as a critical part of their job, something technology can't replace. They say it sets them apart from ride-hailing services like Uber, whose drivers don't have to learn the Knowledge, and they believe it allows them to deliver a superior level of service. But ever since mapping apps arrived on phones and GPS-wielding Uber drivers exploded into London in 2012, the Knowledge has faced a volatile future. Should cabbies have to spend years of their life memorizing every inch of London when they can simply punch in a destination on a screen and be guided? Absolutely, say the drivers I spoke with.
...will be used for good?
only useful for helping a customer? it would never be used to stretch a ride out to bump up the fare a bit, no?
just having the knowledge guarantees nothing.... a tool can cut both ways
Driving while looking at a GPS is clearly more dangerous than driving without looking at a screen of some kind. I prefer to take taxis because they tend to know where they're going more than the fake-taxi people (Uber, Lyft).
I don't respond to AC's.
You'd have to be delusional to think this is an advantage. A human navigator can't see ahead for optimizing against current traffic patterns as can GPS. Plus, imagine all the other things they could have done with their time and effort besides memorizing obsolete information. No wonder this stupid crony industry is going bankrupt.
I was in London last year, and used Uber extensively. Most of the time it worked out fine, but there were a few spectacular failures. In particular, a ride to Kensington Palace dropped us off at a point that was more than a half hour's walk from the Palace. As we walked, we passed an intersection that was only a few hundred yards from the Palace entrance. I'm pretty sure a real cab driver would have dropped us at the closest point.
If it were my livelyhood and I already put in the effort, I'd see that as an excellent way to keep out competitors. But you'd be batshit insane to actually _want_ to learn all that crap if you were just starting out, considering how much the city has grown since 1865, and how easy GPS (possibly with live updates on road conditions) makes things nowadays...
There was a documentary about this on TV, not sure what channel, but I saw it just a few days ago, about how the size of the actually grew on those learning to sharpen their memory like this. Scans where taken before and after, and the results where quite astonishing.
I kinda believe it too, I got a job at a huge corporation, where I was set to do an almost seemingly impossible task - namely learn 25K pages of information about their infrastructure so I could properly map and redirect requests to where it was needed + solve IT solution tasks on the spot if possible instead of redirecting, the answer where all in these 25K pages. At first it was like, I'm never ever gonna be able to do this, after a month I was - I can't believe I can actually remember this much, now I actually believe it can be done, I still have to console the 25K pages manual - but it's rarer and rarer, and my problem solving rate is up to 96% correct now.
What's even more interesting, is that this job has had a profound effect on my private life as well. I've done much more to clean up my life, making sure important things like personal pension, insurance, savings, purchases are done correctly instead of wasting it on "oh, I don't care". My gaming life is amazing in comparison to before, I've reached levels I couldn't even dream of later.
So there's something to this!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Anyone who's ever used a London cabby will value the brevity of the journey when you ask for a recommended hotel near a certain landmark/street, or if you're in a rush to get to a meeting in an obscure area and there's a traffic jam on the normal route. It's shocking how little local knowledge can be required elsewhere.
This has been the case since 1865.
Do you want the whole world to know your spending habits? Who you associate with? Etc. If you use Uber/Lyft etc. and the surveillance state will love you.
Scenario: you stop off at a restaurant to pick up some take out. 15 minutes after you leave a bomb goes off. Of course if you did nothing wrong you have nothing wrong to worry about. Right?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
They're also surprisingly manoeuvrable, able to take passengers in wheelchairs, spacious enough for significant amounts of luggage, etc.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The Knowledge is certainly helpful. The problem is that there are idiosyncrasies to city traffic that are virtually impossible for algorithms to capture adequately, and the error rates on them are much too high for a cab driver to tolerate.
I do strongly feel that a good GPS application with up-to-date traffic information will be of tremendous help to a cab driver, but if they don't know the routes themselves, they're going to make mistakes. Sometimes the GPS app will not understand that you can't make a certain turn at a particular intersection. Sometimes it will misread traffic because one lane is far slower than another lane. If you know the streets well, it's often pretty easy to shave a few minutes off of the travel time, and know the best way to avoid big slowdowns if something like a car crash happens.
GPS apps are also often pretty terrible at the start and end of the journey. At the start, it may not realize which direction you're moving, or how best to reach the road if you're in a parking lot still. At the end of the journey, it may not know the best entrance, and if the best entrance is on a different street than the GPS thinks, it may require a significant detour that would be avoided by simply setting the destination properly. Knowing the city well enough for this can act as a good patch for these inadequacies.
Uberâ(TM)s app *routinely* picks long and slow routes in London. I frequently have to redirect the driver based on my own knowledge or Waze. And of course thereâ(TM)s absolutely zero transparency about fare calculations â" I have to trust that the fare was calculated the way it was promised to be calculated. Meters in black cabs are regulated by a third party, by contrast.
Looking up all facts on the Internet has never backfired! No misinformation out there.
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There's actually detectable changes in the brain of cabbies who've trained for The Knowledge.
Yeah, like the time a few years ago when a GPS had my agent lead us an extra 30 mi or so on the DC Beltway by going the *wrong* direction.
Or the times that it, or Google maps, *always* wants to get you onto an Interstate, rather than using the through streets that the natives know.
And some idiot thinks that a London cabbie doesn't know if a bridge is out? Better than the GOP? Or why they should, or should not, go down that street?
Real World knowledge trumps what you're told by someone who wasn't there.