From the perspective of the cab driver,driving a cab without a seatbelt is inconsequential to the very danger of picking up a new fare.

A few years back in Philly there was a big controversy because cab drivers wouldn't stop to pick up blacks who tried to hail a cab downtown in the business and convention center areas. It was a riot. One of the news stations did a "special report" on it. They had a black guy in business casual try to get a cab and a white guy dressed in jeans and a t-shirt both trying to hail down a cabs. The white guy got a cab to stop every time within a few minutes. The black guy almost never got a cab to stop and the times he did it took him 30 minutes or more of trying. The news caster interviewed a couple cab drivers that they blurred and altered their voice and each of them said that every time a cabby gets robbed at gunpoint its a black guy with a gun AND the blacks that don't rob them also don't tip.