Confronting Sexual Harassment in Taxis

When a Safe Ride Isn’t Safe

Content warning: sexual harassment

Taxis line every main street in town. For many students, they offer a way to get home safe after a night out. Taxis get you to class on time, to social outings, to nearby towns. But are they truly safe?

The Saint interviewed two students who experienced sexual harassment using taxis in St Andrews. 

The first incident happened last summer. Noah, who was a postgraduate at the time, had joint pain and was running late for a dissertation meeting, so he hailed a taxi from Church Street to North Haugh.

Noah paid by phone, but as he tried to leave the car, the driver said Noah hadn’t paid. Noah showed the payment receipt on his phone but the driver said it hadn’t gone through. Then, he then locked Noah’s passenger door. Noah agreed to repay the £5 fee, but after the driver pulled out the card reader, he increased the charge to £15. 

“I was trying really hard to toe the line between being assertive, being like, ‘You can’t do this to me,’ and also, ‘You know how you’re perceived’.” As a genderqueer man, Noah felt he was targeted because the driver viewed him as a woman. “I’m really small and he was bigger than me, so I realised that I’m within reach of this person. I don’t want to give him an excuse to do something, but also, I need to go.”

Noah argued back about the fee — the driver even tried holding the till under his phone to force the payment. Eventually, Noah agreed to pay the £15. But the driver would still not unlock the door.

At that point, Noah tried to call the police — but the taxi driver took his phone. “I was like, okay, this is turning into a properly dangerous situation.” He remembered looking around, but no one was nearby to signal for help. Noah said the driver then asked him to either pay £50 or take off his shirt. Noah refused to take off his shirt, but the driver then wouldn’t allow him to pay the £50.

“He still had my phone, so he held up the phone to my face,” Noah said. “He thought I had face ID and luckily I didn’t, my phone was really old. So he was trying to unlock my phone and was like, ‘Do you have any pictures of yourself?’ I was like, no I’m obviously not doing that, just let me pay you the £50 and maybe you’ll actually let me leave.”

Eventually, the driver let Noah pay the £50 and unlocked the door. A tutorial had let out and a lot of students were passing by. Noah went inside to the bathroom, where he cried and called a friend. That night he reported the incident to the police.

“I don’t think I processed it in the moment because I was so fight-or-flight that I didn’t really have a chance to think about how shitty that was,” Noah said. “I was looking around a lot to see if there were people and considering escape options. I was like, ‘Could I break through the glass?’ and thinking, ‘Do I just leave my phone behind?’ I just wasn’t conscious enough to recognise how bad it was […] I don’t think it really hit me until I was sitting in the bathroom crying.”

Noah sent screenshots of the charges on his banking app to the police. The taxi company was registered under a string of letters — not a real company name. According to Noah, the police said they would look into CCTV footage from the University to track down the licence plate number. But after calling for updates, the police told Noah they couldn’t comment further. Noah still hasn’t heard any updates, months later.

In February, Kat Graves, another postgraduate, had her own taxi nightmare. After leaving the DRA ball and getting a pint at Aikman’s, Kat hailed a taxi off the rank on Bell Street. She lives 30 minutes outside of St Andrews, so she said she sat in the passenger seat to give the driver directions — something she doesn’t normally do.

“On the way there, he just started asking weird questions, like asking me about my piercings,” Kat said. “He was like, ‘Is it alright if I touch them?’ It’s uncomfy to say no. So he went up to touch them, and then went up and stroked my face. I pulled away, but he was driving around in the countryside, literally country roads. I couldn’t have gotten out if I wanted to because I’d be in a field in the middle of nowhere with no signal.”

Over the course of 30 minutes, Kat said the driver asked if she lived alone — which she lied about and said no. He asked what a ‘sugar daddy’ was, but she said she, “didn’t want to initiate anything sexual,” so gave a vague response. 

Then, he asked her about French kissing, and if she had a boyfriend. “He was really adamant that my boyfriend should be giving me money,” Kat said. “And he was like, ‘If you ever get sick of your boyfriend, you should ring me.’ And he took my phone off me at one point so he could save his number in it.”

He was pressuring Kat to smoke in his car — she refused. “I don’t know if it’s a thing in Scotland, but in Manchester there are cases of people spiking cigarettes and vapes. So in the back of my mind I was like, ‘I’m not going to take a cigarette,’” she said.

When they finally got to her house, the driver offered Kat a discount, which she initially declined, but after he kept persisting, she accepted. As she got out of the vehicle, she said he asked if she wanted a massage.

“I just kept thinking, ‘I’ve got to get home, I’ve got to get home. As long as I’m in my flat, I’ll be safe. I can lock the doors,’” Kat said. “But then when I got home and I was in my flat, I was like, ‘Oh s**t, he knows where I live.’ He could just come back at any time.”

She called the non-emergency number, and that same night the police arrived at her doorstep to interview her. Kat told them she would be willing to press charges if anyone else came forward. Only three days later, another girl reported him, having had a near-identical experience. The driver was then arrested, and his taxi license was suspended. According to Kat, a court date has been set for April, and he is facing charges of “acting in threatening and abusive manners”.

“Afterwards I felt disgusting that it had happened,” Kat said. “I felt sick for myself, and I just couldn’t stop crying for ages. Then, after that, I just felt numb about it […] I was petrified to leave my house for days. Just walking down my drive to empty the bins I had a full-blown panic attack. I was just in my flat for days, all the curtains closed, sitting in the dark with a knife in my bed in case anything happened at night, my bedroom doors locked.”

A YourUnion spokesperson said, “Following the recent concerns raised around student taxi experiences, Your Union has been working with StAnd Together to look at how we can support students with clear, practical advice around getting home safely.

"Over the summer, Student Services will be working on a full update of the Good Night Out Guide, and alongside that, StAnd Together and Your Union will be developing general guidance on using taxis safely in St Andrews. 

"We’re keen to keep the focus on empowering students with useful tips and reminders that apply no matter which company they choose to use, rather than making recommendations around specific firms."

Illustration by Holly Ward