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Comment by jedc | Hacker News Reader

It's not completely replaceable by technology.

Once I had gotten a text from my wife as to where to meet her for dinner with friends. She didn't know the restaurant name, and had gotten the street name wrong. I just read the text to my London black cab driver, he asked me: "Did you mean XXX restaurant on [correct street name]?" (Note: there were multiple restaurants on the street). And sure enough, he was 100% correct.

That's the day I learned to really respect drivers with The Knowledge.

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That's probably not "The Knowledge"; that's just some local experience and the fact that it's a high probability someone is going from that precise restaurant quite often. I myself have drunkenly hailed many a taxi outside dodgy restaurants in London. Unlicensed minicabs are pretty good at that too.

Conversely, got a taxi from Angel to Leyton and the idiot went via Poplar and the A13 and the journey cost me £55 for a £30 journey.

Maybe I wasn't clear... I was in a couple miles away at home and told this driver the wrong street (and no restaurant name) and he got me where I needed to go. You might put it down to "local experience" but I think it's better attributed to the knowledge; there's no way a minicab driver would have been able to do the same.

As you rightly point out, it doesn't mean that drivers won't still take the piss, but it definitely limits it. (Particularly when I compare it to virtually any other large city I've traveled to.)

The knowledge is not only the streets, they also have to memorise "points of interest" which includes things like pubs and restaurants.

But that's illogical. If you know the bar and restaurant scene in London, it's very volatile. Restaurants and bars change names at an incredible rate. "The knowledge" will have expired by the time you've learned it.

You must not have read the article.

There's an expectation that drivers keep their knowledge current. Certainly the examiners keep their knowledge current and test based on that.

I did. I really don't think you understand the scale of the problem.

It's certainly a large scale problem, but a smaller problem than learning all the points of interest in the first place ... no one is saying it's easy ...

Read the article. Updating the Knowledge is exactly what they do when businesses open and close.

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