Taxi Cab
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This taxi trivia quiz has 90 free questions with answers and covers the whole meter. One half is the history of cabs: the first horse-drawn hackneys of Paris and London, the electric Bersey cabs and Daimler taximeter cars of 1897, why New York went yellow, what The Knowledge tests, and how medallion prices soared past $1 million and then collapsed. The other half goes global and on screen: Tokyo's driver-operated doors, Hong Kong's colour-coded fleet, Mexico City's Beetle cabs, tuk-tuks, Checker cabs and Uber's early days. Taxis have a screen life too, so the sitcom Taxi gets its due, from the Sunshine Cab Company and Louie De Palma's cage to Latka, Reverend Jim and the show's 18 Emmys, alongside Taxi Driver, Luc Besson's French Taxi films, the Queen Latifah remake, Cash Cab, Taxicab Confessions, Collateral and Night on Earth. Every answer has been checked against a reference page, so you can argue the results with confidence. Play through the 90 questions, see your score, and share it with anyone who has ever hailed a cab.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which founder of Chicago's Yellow Cab Company later gave his name to a car-rental giant?
John Hertz
John Hertz put his first Yellow Cabs on Chicago's streets in 1915, then bought a car-rental firm and renamed it after himself; he sold his cab interests in 1929.
Q 02One disputed etymology traces 'hackney' to the Old French 'haquenée', a word for what?
An ambling horse
An ambling horse, a gentle nag for everyday riding, is what haquenée meant; one leading dictionary has the French borrowing the word from English, where it began with the horse pastures of Hackney.
Q 03New York made yellow compulsory for its taxis in 1967 to curb what?
Unlicensed cabs
Unlicensed cabs were the target: with one compulsory colour, a rider could tell at a glance that a taxi was official and regulated by the city.
Q 04Who played Travis Bickle, the 'You talkin' to me?' cabbie of Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver?
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro improvised the mirror scene's 'You talkin' to me?', by the screenwriter's own account, and the line now ranks tenth on the American Film Institute's list of great movie quotes.
Q 05In which 1997 sci-fi film does Bruce Willis play Korben Dallas, who drives a flying taxi in the 23rd century?
The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element takes off when Leeloo leaps from a ledge and crashes into Korben's cab; its director, Luc Besson, wrote the French hit Taxi a year later.
Q 06Who wrote the screenplay of Taxi Driver, the first of his several scripts for Martin Scorsese?
Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader wrote it in under a fortnight after weeks spent living in his car, picturing himself as a lonely man shut inside a yellow cab.
Q 07What nickname did Walter Bersey's 1897 London electric cabs earn from their noise?
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds lasted only two years: the heavy batteries shook themselves and the tyres to pieces, and the cabs were withdrawn in 1899 as the company went into liquidation.
Q 08The Daimler Victoria, an early motor cab fitted with a taximeter, began operating in June 1897 in which city?
Stuttgart
Stuttgart put Gottlieb Daimler's cab to work in 1897; its taximeter, a German invention that reckoned the fare, is what gave the taxi its name.
Q 09What were the horse-drawn cabs for hire of seventeenth-century Paris called, after a saint?
Fiacres
Fiacres were named for Saint Fiacre, whose name marked the premises where Nicolas Sauvage began hiring out carriages; the saint then became the patron of cab drivers.
Q 10Who played Alex, the veteran cabbie at the heart of the sitcom Taxi?
Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch played Alex, the one driver in the garage who admits cab-driving is his real job; the role won him two Primetime Emmys, in 1981 and 1983.
Q 11Trainee London cabbies learning The Knowledge usually ride its routes on what?
Motor scooter
A motor scooter with the day's streets clipped up in front of the rider marks out a 'Knowledge boy' or girl; they must learn 320 set runs and some 25,000 streets within six miles of Charing Cross.
Q 12Brain scans of London cabbies who had memorised the city's streets found changes in which region?
The hippocampus
The hippocampus, the seat of spatial memory, had redistributed its grey matter in drivers who knew the city by heart; the study won Eleanor Maguire an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.
Q 13Which two-wheeled London carriage for hire, patented in 1834 by a York architect, needed only a single horse?
Hansom cab
Q 21In the sitcom Taxi (1978-83), the drivers work the night shift out of which fictional garage?
Sunshine Cab Company
The Sunshine Cab Company garage was the drivers' base; most of them treated the night shift as a stopgap while they chased other careers.
Q 22Who played Louie De Palma, the caged-in dispatcher who bullies the drivers on the sitcom Taxi?
Danny DeVito
Danny DeVito won the part by walking into his audition, demanding in unprintable terms to know who wrote the script and throwing it on the table; the creators fell about laughing.
Q 23On Taxi, Andy Kaufman's Latka developed a smooth-talking lounge-lizard alter ego who went by what name?
Vic Ferrari
The hansom cab put its driver on a high seat behind the passengers, who spoke to him and paid through a hatch in the roof; he worked a lever to release the doors.
Q 14On a London black cab, what does a lit TAXI sign on the roof tell you?
It is free for hire
It is free for hire when the sign glows, which matters because only black cabs may be hailed on the street; minicabs have to be booked.
Q 15Harry Allen founded the New York Taxicab Company in 1907 with gasoline cars imported from which country?
France
France supplied the cars; Allen started the firm in a fury after being charged five dollars for a short ride, and vowed to charge by the mile instead.
Q 16Travis Bickle, the insomniac cabbie of Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver, is a former Marine who served in which war?
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War is where Travis served as a Marine before driving nights through a decaying New York; his spiral ends with him turning vigilante.
Q 17In taxi jargon, what is the fixed amount added to the fare the moment you get into the cab?
The drop
The drop is where the fare starts before the wheels turn; after it, everything is metered by distance and waiting time.
Q 18Benny the Cab, a talking cartoon taxi, helps the heroes escape in which 1988 film?
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit has Benny whisk Roger and detective Eddie Valiant away from Judge Doom's weasels; Charles Fleischer voiced both the cab and the rabbit.
Q 19What legal term covers taxi companies, airlines and railroads because they offer transport to the general public?
Common carriers
Common carriers must serve the general public without discrimination, unlike contract carriers, which may turn customers away; in New York a cab that refuses a street hail is breaking the rules.
Q 20New York's 1937 Haas Act capped the number of taxis and created which transferable licence?
Medallions
Medallions, the transferable licences created by the 1937 freeze, became the scarce asset: the fleet size barely changed for decades, so the licence rather than the car carried the value.
Vic Ferrari was Latka's swaggering alter ego; the writers gave Latka multiple personality disorder so Andy Kaufman could play other characters on the show.
Q 24Who played the burnt-out 1960s casualty 'Reverend' Jim Ignatowski on Taxi?
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd first appeared as a one-off guest, the minister who performs Latka's sham marriage so the mechanic can stay in America, then joined the main cast the following year.
Q 25After ABC cancelled Taxi in 1982, which network picked the sitcom up for its fifth and final season?
NBC
NBC picked up Taxi for the 1982-83 season after ABC dropped it; for a while it had looked as though a premium cable channel would rescue the show instead.
Q 26Who won two Emmys on Taxi as Simka, the wife of Andy Kaufman's Latka?
Carol Kane
Carol Kane believes her Yiddish-speaking role in the film Hester Street helped win her the part, since Simka speaks an invented language with a vaguely Eastern European accent.
Q 27Who composed 'Angela', the mellow instrumental theme of the sitcom Taxi?
Bob James
Bob James wrote 'Angela' for a scene in the third episode, 'Blind Date', and the producers liked it so much that it replaced the theme they had planned.
Q 28The opening titles of the sitcom Taxi show a Checker cab crossing which East River bridge?
Queensboro
The Queensboro Bridge clip lasts only about fifteen seconds: it was shot as a link between scenes, so the opening titles simply repeat parts of it.
Q 29What is the day job of Elaine Nardo, Marilu Henner's part-time cabbie on the sitcom Taxi?
Gallery receptionist
Gallery receptionist is Elaine's foothold in the art world she hopes to rise in; a divorced mother of two, she drives the cab to pay the bills.
Q 30Which future co-developer of The Simpsons was one of the four co-creators of the sitcom Taxi?
James L. Brooks
James L. Brooks and co-creator David Davis took the idea from a 1975 New York magazine article about night-shift cabbies, 'Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet'.