Jamie Young, Senior Research at The RSA:
The tweets from the drivers in the Smarter Cab Drivers Challenge reveal some of the stories behind the shifting leaderboard.
Before the challenge launched we had preparation, as Bernie checked his tyres, wound his windows up and took his golf clubs out of the boot. It was a strategy that seemed to pay off later on with unprecented fuel economy and a place at the top of the table. Bernie wasn’t the only happy one, with Arshad catching a lucrative job from Birmingham to Thorpe Park and one of Amar’s colleagues getting a fare from Nottingham to Blackpool – and Amar himself had a minor celebrity incident when he gave a lift to the Sri Lanka cricket coach.
One of the more unexpected events was the taxi driver protest in Nottingham. The drivers were protesting that they were no longer being allowed to wait on yellow lines when the rank around the station was full, asked instead to drive around continually or face an on-the-spot fine. The city’s cabbies took the change at face value, descending on the station and resulting in widespread congestion – a turn of events that cost Amar and Amer dear, resulting in some unhappiness until Amar managed to pull himself off the bottom of the table with an early rise and clear drive.
However, while the bottom of the leaderboard moved around, nothing was able to rearrange the top of the table, and the second week starts with Bernie still riding high.
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