How many streets do London taxi drivers memorize?

“Take me from Park Lane to Earl's Court,” a customer might say. And a cab driver in London is required to know the quickest way off by heart. That is because they know the center of the British capital; they'll have committed 320 runs across 25,000 streets, encompassing at least 20,000 landmarks, to memory.



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An Uber driver just needs a phone. Better than GPS.

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How do taxi drivers learn the streets in their area? Many of them grew up in the area or have lived there for awhile so they know the streets simply from being a part of the community. Others, who have to learn on the job, simply pick it up from the many hours of driving the streets each week!

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It turns out that to become a Black Cab driver in London applicants need to study for two to four years and during that time memorize an incredible 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks within a 25-mile radius of Charing Cross in London.

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For all that, you can thank the Knowledge, a 153-year-old system for memorizing every street and landmark in a six square-mile area of central London. The Knowledge requires all cabbies to navigate between any two points in the city entirely from memory.

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And a cab driver in London is required to know the quickest way off by heart. That is because they know the center of the British capital; they'll have committed 320 runs across 25,000 streets, encompassing at least 20,000 landmarks, to memory.

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London taxi drivers are licensed and must have passed an extensive training course (the Knowledge). Unlike many other cities, the number of taxicab drivers in London is not limited.

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Previous studies have shown that taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus compared to non-taxi drivers. This is interesting as this brain region shrinks and becomes damaged in Alzheimer's disease, leading to symptoms of memory loss and confusion associated with the disease.

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The average london taxi driver salary in the United Kingdom is £39,000 per year or £20 per hour.

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In other words, taxi drivers had plumper memory centers than their peers. It seemed that the longer someone had been driving a taxi, the larger his hippocampus, as though the brain expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London's streets.

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Taxi drivers, as well as other professional drivers categories, may experience genitourinary disturbances such as voiding dysfunction, urinary infections but also infertility, urolithiasis, bladder cancer, also called “taxi cab syndrome”[13].

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Tipping taxi drivers It is polite to tip 10 to 15% of the taxi fare for black cabs and licensed minicabs in London. However, most people simply round up the fare to the nearest £1 and tell the driver to keep the change.

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Introduced in the mid 19th Century, The Knowledge requires drivers to memorise 25,000 streets and 100,000 landmarks within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. Successful applicants have to pass up to a dozen interviews with the entire process taking up to four years.

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Do Make Money as a Taxi Driver in the UK a Good Living? On average, taxi drivers in the United Kingdom earn between £20,000 and £30,000 per year. On average, taxi drivers in the United Kingdom earn between £9 and £15 per hour. However, the rate may increase on certain days, such as bank holidays and Saturday evenings.

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