The Taxi Insurer highlights wide-ranging demands placed on cabbies after £230 grocery errand story
- Perry Richardson
- Mar 24
- 2 min read
A taxi insurance specialist has pointed to the growing scope of responsibilities placed on drivers, following reports of a London black cabbie completing a £230 grocery errand for a passenger.
The incident, which saw a driver tasked with purchasing items from Planet Organic and delivering them to a passenger’s mother, prompted discussion across the trade about the level of trust placed in licensed drivers operating in London.
Responding to the story, David Sweeney, head of taxi broking at The Taxi Insurer, said the situation reflects a broader trend identified in industry research.
Sweeney said: “Our research has revealed the breadth of a cabbie’s responsibilities and uncovered some of the more unusual requests passengers have made of taxi and private hire vehicle drivers. For example, some passengers view their driver as a surrogate therapist, with one in five (19%) asking for personal advice, and 8% divulging secrets.”
Industry response points to research showing passengers increasingly rely on drivers for tasks beyond transport
Sweeney added that drivers are also sometimes asked to take on roles outside the expected scope of passenger transport, including surveillance-type requests. “Others imagine their driver as some kind of spy, with one in 10 (11%) asking them to follow another car or a pedestrian,” he said.
The research also highlighted the frequency with which drivers are relied upon to recover or safeguard important and unusual items left behind in vehicles. “And then there are the passengers who treat their driver as a stand-in parent who’ll reunite them with whatever they’ve absent-mindedly left on the back seat: a passport (10%), human ashes in an urn (4%) or even a baby (3%)!” he added.
“It just goes to show that a cab driver’s role is so much more than simply getting their customers from A to B.”
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