My experience with with most professional drivers is that they're very calm and cerebral in their driving-- deftly anticipating and avoiding accidents, finding other driver's idiocy amusing if they take any special note of it at all. They patently wait rather than taking seconds-shaving risky maneuvers because they've seen it all and know what can go wrong. They drive predictably, use their signals, etc.

So why is it that almost all my experience in taxis is that the driver seems to be a crazed maniac with a presumably diagnoseable rage disorder? They drive like their car has a bomb strapped to it that will go off if they ever yield at any point, unless they signal a temporary disarm code (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) by pulse width modulating their horn immediately after each and every yield event. Any use of their turn signals, however, will block the transmission of the disarm sequence, so they must be used sparingly if at all. Fortunately, their cars are seemingly powered by near misses with pedestrians combined with a form of fusion, so they have little reason to yield in the first place.

This is both my experience as a passenger in these drivers vehicles as well as from sharing the road with them.

It is just that my experience with taxies is mostly in dense city areas and my experience with other professional drivers is in other places with fewer drugs in the water? Is there something about driving a large truck that magically creates more consciousnesses? Is the idea that your life flashing before your eyes repeatedly will convince you of the relative worthlessness of money and cause to to leave a larger tip?