'Handcuffed to the wheel': 4 yellow taxi drivers died on the job over the summer

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.