Patience is not lost on Ali Abubakar among the hustle of a New York rush hour.
A yellow-cab driver from the South Bronx, Abubakar, 43, was one of 493 professional drivers the city honored Wednesday for their sterling driving record. Abubakar completed 10,830 trips between 2016 and 2018 without a single moving violation, crash involving injury or city safety violation.
His secret of navigating chaotic city streets: patience and faith.
A Queens cabbie who drove a yellow taxi for three decades hanged himself in his garage after suffering massive financial woes in the era of Uber, officials and friends said Wednesday.
Nicanor Ochisor, 65, was found hanging from a wooden beam in his garage on 58th Road near 69th Lane in Maspeth Friday morning, police said.
Taxi advocates quickly blamed the Romanian immigrant’s suicide on the glut of drivers working for app-driven, for-hire companies like Uber and Lyft taking money from medallion drivers.
Morning rush hour was in full swing, yet the deafening bang that came from Douglas Schifter’s vehicle cut through the noisy clamor of New Yorkers hustling to make it to work on time. Inside a rented Nissan sedan, the 61-year-old professional driver put the barrel end of a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger at the eastern gate of City Hall.
It was a shot heard round the city, where drivers are increasingly feeling the pinch brought on by an influx of new ride-for-hire vehicles. With the taxi industry in the midst of transforming into an app-driven business, Schifter’s suicide was a call to respect the human behind the wheel.
“I cannot survive any longer with working 120 hours [a week]!,” Schifter, who had over 40 years of driving experience, wrote in a Feb. 5 Facebook post shortly before leaving this world. “I am not a Slave and I refuse to be one.”
A 61-year-old livery driver posted on Facebook early Monday that city and state politicians were to blame for his financial ruin — then pulled up to the gates of City Hall and shot himself dead with a shotgun, authorities said.
The driver, identified by sources as Douglas Schifter, blamed Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo as well as former Mayor Bloomberg for making it impossible for him to earn a living behind the wheel because of an increasing number of taxis and black cars in the city, and because of over-regulation of his industry.
“Now the politicians have flooded the streets with unlimited cars and some 3,000 new ones every month still coming. There is not enough work for everybody that pays a living,” Schifter posted around 4:30 a.m.
“This is SLAVERY NOW. … I don’t know how else to try to make a difference other than a public display of a most private affair.”