Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

TAXI

Cabbie charges obese passenger for flat tyre

An obese man has lodged a complaint after a taxi driver in Rome charged him extra, blaming a flat tyre on his excess weight.

Published: 22 June 2015 12:15 CEST

Cabbie charges obese passenger for flat tyre

This is not the taxi in the story. Photo: Patrik Tschudin/Flickr

The customer, who is from Lecco, northern Italy, took the cab from Rome’s central Termini station to a clinic in the outskirts of the city for a routine medical check-up.

During the journey one of the back tyres became flat, and the cab driver had to change it.

According to the passenger, the driver then returned to the vehicle in a temper.

“When he came back into the car I could hear him muttering to himself. I didn’t understand what he was saying,” the client, identified only as M.O., told Rome daily Il Messaggero.

“I thought was just annoyed about the incident. I never would have imagined what was going to happen.”

To the shock of the passenger, the taxi driver proceeded to blame him for the mishap and even charged him an extra €50 on top of the €30 fare for the tyre.

The man paid but told Il Messaggero: “I felt humiliated. It wasn’t fair. This is also a kind of discrimination. It was obvious that he was mocking me because I am obese.”

Once he had returned to his native city of Lecco, the client, who weighs 150 kilos, went to an association for obese people where he lodged a formal complaint against the taxi driver.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

'Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority': Truth commission releases report

Stockholm’s policy of assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries “harmed the minority and continues to hinder the defence of its language, culture and traditional livelihoods,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset said in an article published in Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter.

“Amends must be made in order to move forward,” it said, adding that “acknowledging the historic wrongdoings” should be a first step.

The commission, which began work in June 2020, was to submit a final report to the government on Wednesday.

Tornedalen is a geographical area in northeastern Sweden and northwestern Finland. The Tornedalian, Kven and Lantalaiset minority groups are often grouped under the name Tornedalians, who number around 50,000 in Sweden.

The commission noted that from the late 1800s, Tornedalian children were prohibited from using their mother tongue, meänkieli, in school and forced to use Swedish, a ban that remained in place until the 1960s.

From the early 1900s, some 5,500 Tornedalian children were sent away to Lutheran Church boarding schools “in a nationalistic spirit”, where their language and traditional dress were prohibited.

Punishments, violence and fagging were frequent at the schools, and the Tornedalian children were stigmatised in the villages, the commission said.

“Their language and culture was made out to be something shameful … (and) their self-esteem and desire to pass on the language to the next generation was negatively affected.”

The minority has historically made a living from farming, hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, though their reindeer herding rights have been limited over the years due to complexities with the indigenous Sami people’s herding rights.

“The minority feels that they have been made invisible, that their rights over their traditional livelihoods have been taken away and they now have no power of influence,” the commission wrote.

It recommended that the meänkieli language be promoted in schools and public service broadcasting, and the state “should immediately begin the process of a public apology”.

The Scandinavian country also has a separate Truth Commission probing discriminatory policies toward the Sami people.

That report is due to be published in 2025.

Url copied to clipboard!