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Driving to death: NYC yellow taxi drivers keep dying on the job, unable to make ends meet
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Sep 28, 2026
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Ramsey Khalifeh / Gothamist
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Sep 28, 2026
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Babacar Dem was nearing the end of another long shift last month behind the wheel of his yellow cab when he took a break to use the restroom at a chicken shop in the Central Bronx.
Dem, 60, never came out.
“They went to check on him in the bathroom and they found he was lying down,” said Muhammad Camara, who was working at Kennedy Fried Chicken when firefighters broke down the door to find Dem. He was pronounced dead at BronxCare nearby, according to a representative for the hospital.
Dem's family took his body back to his native Senegal earlier this month.
Dem was one of at least four yellow cab drivers who died on the job over the summer. All four were immigrants struggling to make ends meet in the city’s beleaguered taxi industry. Several, including Dem, were forced to choose between working long hours for poverty wages and tending to their health issues.
The cabbie deaths have further shaken a workforce that’s been devastated by the rapid rise of app-based car services like Uber and Lyft over the last decade. The tragedies have prompted renewed questions about the viability of New York City’s once iconic yellow taxi business, where many drivers struggle to make weekly payments on their cabs.
Dem, who had driven a taxi in the city since 2001, sought to own his own yellow taxi through a “driver-owned vehicle” contract with a company called Queens Medallion.
Queens Medallion employees said in interviews at the company’s Long Island City garage that Dem would get the title to his cab after three years of weekly payments of at least $800. But Dem had fallen behind on his payments since getting his contract in May 2025, and owed about $3,800, the employees said.
Dem’s death has not been previously reported. He had been going to the doctor three times a week for dialysis treatments, according to his close friend Baba Diagne and Queens Medallion sales manager Renu Kaunas. Diagne said he kept working through his health issues and drove himself to death.
“It’s a debtors’ prison,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, the union that represents cab drivers.
“It’s an industry where your expenses are fixed, but your income is not guaranteed, and that’s why drivers feel that they’re handcuffed to the wheel,” said Desai. “You begin each day at a negative and you have to keep working, whether you’re sick or have an emergency, even if you’re grieving, you keep working so at least you’re not paying your expenses out of pocket.
The garage at Queens Medallion is a hub for New York City taxi workers.
Ramsey Khalifeh / Gothamist
Diagne, a fellow cab driver, recalled speaking with Dem by phone days before his death. He said Dem told him, “No matter what I do, I have so much balance that I cannot overcome that balance this week.”
“This didn’t happen before, when I first started,” said Diagne. “You didn’t hear people die in their car when I first started because there was no pressure.”
The financial pressure Dem faced is not unique. A recent survey conducted by the Taxi Workers Alliance found taxi drivers who lease or finance a medallion have to make between $800 and $1,200 a week to cover their payments. If they come up short on fares, they’re left with nothing — and a growing pile of debt.
Dying behind the wheel
For many cabbies, the string of deaths over the summer brought back haunting memories of 2018, when at least eight yellow cab drivers died by suicide.
That year, drivers across the city who had purchased taxi medallions found themselves drowning in debt. Predatory lending and speculation caused the price of a medallion to soar over $1 million in the 2010s. Then Uber and Lyft came into the market, flooding the streets with tens of thousands of cars that eviscerated the yellow taxi industry’s monopoly and the value of the medallions.
Following months of protests by taxi workers, lawmakers and private lenders in 2021 passed a relief plan to help pull drivers out of debt. But taxi workers still struggle to make a living.
The drivers who died on the job this summer suffered poor health from the stress and strains of being a yellow cab driver, according to interviews with their friends and fellow taxi workers.
The four taxi drivers who died on the job over the summer, from left to right: Khalifa Siwa, Babacar Dem, Richard Coulibaly and Jagjit Singh.
Photos courtesy Westway Transport, Baba Diange and New York Taxi Workers Alliance
Khalifa Siwa, a cabbie who was diabetic, died in his taxi on the West Side Highway with his insulin pen in his hands. Exactly when he passed away isn’t clear, as his family denied an autopsy. Sarah Elhefnawy, Siwa’s lease manager at Westway Transport Solutions in Hell’s Kitchen, said his cab’s GPS shows he stopped along the highway on Aug. 26. Police said he was pronounced dead on the evening of Sept. 2.
Siwa had been hospitalized after he had a stroke in July, but continued driving, according to Elhefnawy. Like Dem, Siwa was on a lease-to-own contract with required weekly payments.
“ He had a very visible facial paralysis from the stroke,” said Elhefnawy. “Physically, he could walk and he could move. Everything was fine, but in his face, you could see the paralysis that was there, and it was noticeable… But the doctor said he was cleared to work.”
Elhefnawy said she spent two weeks coordinating with Siwa’s family to return his body to his home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Another driver, Richard Coulibaly, died in his cab in Harlem on July 2 during a heat wave. The 73-year-old cabbie died of high blood pressure and heart disease, according to the chief medical examiner’s office.
Coulibaly had a lease-to-own agreement with Queens Medallion, the same company as Dem.
“[He was] a very private guy, very nice guy,” said Renu Kaunas, who works sales at the company. “I never hear his voice [to be] very loud. Very down-to-earth person.”
She described Coulibaly’s earnings as “basic,” and recalled once helping him apply for a low-income apartment. Coulibaly wasn’t selected.
A network of cabbies worked with Coulibaly’s family to ship his body back to his home country of Cote d’Ivoire for burial.
The latest driver death came on Sept. 11, when Jagjit Singh was found in his cab in the West Village. The medical examiner’s office said Singh, 53, died of a suspected heart attack. He’d been in his car for six hours before he was discovered, according to the Taxi Workers Alliance.
Unlike the other three drivers, Singh owned his own medallion, which he’d purchased in 2023, according to the union.
“It's sad to see that all of these people died alone,” said Elhefnawy.
A growing crisis
Mayor Zohran Mamdani won office as an ally to the city’s struggling taxi workers. As a state assemblymember in 2021, he joined taxi drivers who went on hunger strike outside of City Hall as they called for debt relief.
The mayor took a yellow taxi to his inauguration on Jan. 1, and was driven by Richard Chow, the brother of a yellow cab medallion owner who died by suicide in 2018 after falling deep into debt.
But this summer’s string of deaths highlight the ongoing struggles of the city’s taxi workers.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani took a yellow taxi to his inauguration.
Courtesy NYC Mayor's Office
Data from the Taxi and Limousine Commission shows Uber and Lyft have more than 84,000 cars licensed to operate city streets, compared to just over 10,000 active yellow taxis. The data shows the average yellow taxi takes in about $387 per day in fares, before deductions like tolls and taxes.
TLC Commissioner Midori Valdivia said in a statement that the recent driver deaths underscored the need to support workers’ health and wellbeing.
“Drivers are at the heart of New York City’s transportation system, working every day to support their families and keep our city moving,” said Valdivia. “They deserve dignity, respect, and support, and we remain focused on all meaningful ways to strengthen that support, including improving working conditions, expanding access to long-term health care, and introducing wellness resources in partnership with agencies across the city.”
Employees at Queens Medallion said drivers used to net more than $500 a day. Now, with so much competition from the app companies, they said their drivers are making less and having a hard time with their weekly payments.
“ I'm from a taxi family. My dad used to drive taxis. My family background is taxi. So time has changed,” said Kaunas, the sales manager at Queens Medallion. “Since Uber came in, it's destroyed the business … I would say twice a year, the business goes really down. [Drivers] hardly make a lease. It's really hard to survive.”
Kaunas said that nearly 90% of all of their vehicles involve lease-to-own agreements with drivers. The deals are intended to be a more affordable way for cabbies to eventually own their car. But Kaunas also estimated 10% to 15% of the drivers had accrued some level of debt by coming up short on payments.
Kaunas said before the pandemic, only half their cars were issued on a lease-to-own basis. The other half were simply weekly leases without the path to owning the vehicle.
Making the weekly payments used to be easier, said Queens Medallion general manager Tommy Chronas. He recalled the company was able to staff two drivers per taxi before Uber and Lyft took over the market. That meant one driver could work an eight-hour shift in the morning, while another would take over with a shift in the evening, and the two would split the cost of the weekly lease. But there isn’t enough demand and there aren't enough drivers left to carry two full shifts per taxi, said Chronas.
Desai said the outlook is growing more and more dire for drivers. Her union’s survey, which gathered responses from 433 yellow cab drivers, found that 10% of the workers said they know another driver who had become homeless in the last year. The survey found 30% of the respondents had fallen behind on their rent or mortgage in the last year.
The survey points to the impossible choice faced by Dem, which he relayed to Diagne during their last conversation before Dem died in the chicken shop bathroom.
Dem said he was tired of trying to keep up with his payments. “I’m not going to kill myself” by working too much, Diagne recalled him saying. Dem said he wanted “to stay home. I’m going to enjoy my family.”
But days later, he was back on the road for the last time.
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new york city
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Ramsey Khalifeh
Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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