by The meter sits there, technically functional, entirely unused. He has, instead, a mental pricing model built from twenty years of routes, traffic patterns, and reading exactly how much a passenger looks like they can afford.
CHENNAI – A veteran auto-rickshaw driver reportedly has never once, in over twenty years behind the wheel, actually used the meter installed in his vehicle, relying instead on an entirely unwritten, self-developed pricing system he insists produces “genuinely more fair” fares than the official meter ever could, a claim passengers receive with varying degrees of skepticism depending largely on how the negotiation happens to go that particular day.
“The meter does not know the traffic on this specific road at this specific hour,” the driver explained, gesturing dismissively toward the unused device mounted on his dashboard. “The meter does not know if it is raining, if there is a festival happening, if the passenger is clearly in a hurry or clearly has time to spare. I know all of that. My price reflects the actual real conditions of the ride, not some fixed number a machine calculated once and never adjusted since.”
Passengers report a wide range of experiences with the driver’s unwritten system, with several describing genuinely reasonable, even generous fares during quiet periods, and others reporting considerably steeper negotiations during peak traffic or inclement weather, a variance the driver defends as “simply responsive pricing, the same basic principle every taxi app in this city now charges its own customers, except I have been doing it manually for two decades before any app existed.”
City transport officials, informed of drivers who decline to use installed meters, confirmed this practice remains technically a regulatory violation, though enforcement varies considerably across the city’s large auto-rickshaw fleet, with one official acknowledging that “meter compliance has always been a genuinely persistent challenge in this specific sector, and drivers with strong reputations and loyal regular customers tend to face considerably less practical pressure to actually use the device.”
The driver’s regular customers, several of whom have used his services for years, report generally trusting his pricing judgment over what they describe as “the meter’s own well-known unreliability,” noting that meters across the city’s broader rickshaw fleet are widely understood to run consistently high compared to actual negotiated fares, a reputation that has, paradoxically, made drivers who skip the meter entirely seem, to some regular riders, like the more trustworthy option.
A newer passenger, unfamiliar with the driver’s specific reputation, described her own experience considerably less charitably, noting she paid what she later learned, comparing notes with a friend, was “probably about forty percent more than a comparable ride should have cost,” an outcome the driver attributes to her being “clearly unfamiliar with the actual going rate for that specific route, which I do factor into my assessment, I will admit.”
The driver says he has no plans to begin using the meter regardless of any regulatory pressure, insisting that two decades of manually calculated, situationally adjusted fares have earned him “a genuinely loyal customer base that trusts my judgment considerably more than they would trust a machine that has never once had to actually navigate this city’s traffic itself.”
City officials, informed of this specific driver’s two-decade meter avoidance record, acknowledged that formal enforcement across the entire rickshaw fleet remains “genuinely resource-intensive to sustain consistently,” a gap the driver says he is well aware of and has, in his own words, “factored into my long-term business planning for quite some time now.”
The driver, asked what he would do if the city ever did begin strictly enforcing meter usage, considered the question for a long moment before answering. “I suppose I would find a way to make the meter agree with my own numbers,” he said, smiling. “One way or another, I do not think my customers are going to suddenly start preferring the machine’s judgment over twenty years of mine.”
A younger driver working nearby, overhearing this exchange, admitted he still relies on his own meter most of the time, though he conceded, somewhat reluctantly, that “the older drivers with the loyal customers do seem to manage things a little differently, and honestly, watching them work, I understand the appeal, even if I am not confident enough yet in my own judgment to actually try it myself.”
The veteran driver, overhearing this admission, offered the younger man a single piece of advice before pulling away with his next fare. “Twenty years,” he said. “Come find me again in twenty years and tell me whether you still trust the meter more than your own judgment by then.”
The younger driver, watching him pull into traffic, admitted he genuinely had no idea what his own answer might be after that same span of time, an uncertainty he said he found, oddly, more reassuring than troubling.
Both men, for now, continue driving the same streets, one guided entirely by an unused meter, the other by two decades of memory the meter never had the chance to develop.
Passengers, for their part, continue climbing into both vehicles without much thought given to which specific pricing philosophy is about to determine their fare.
For related commentary on informal expertise confidently overriding any formal, standardized system, see News Parody and Satire Website, plus further reading at News Satire Sites.
Additional coverage at What Is Satire?. More satire at Reductress.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
