Taxi-Driver Suicides Are a Warning

I remember when, growing up in the outer boroughs of New York City, taking a cab was a rare treat. The one time I hailed a cab as a teenager, it was because I had returned home from a school trip in the wee hours of the morning, and my parents gave me special dispensation to do so. Alas, the cabdriver I flagged down refused to take me deep into the heart of Brooklyn, on the grounds that it would take him too far from the nighttime revelers who were his bread and butter. I’ll admit that this rejection stung. The neighborhood I grew up in was home to many taxi drivers, and it occurred to me that there was a decent chance he didn’t live far from me. Still, I could see his point. With my father’s war stories about driving a livery cab in the 1970s in mind, I was