The number of taxi drivers in Northern Ireland has climbed over the last year as a result of drivers adding second jobs to cope with inflationary pressures, according to data from an insurance comparison site.
CompareNI.com said the number of new taxi drivers in the province who have held a taxi badge for less than six months has climbed to 18% of the total taxi driving population in 2022 from just 5% last year.
Meanwhile, the number of Uber drivers in Northern Ireland has increased to 11% from 6% of all taxis, although that figure is still well down on the UK average where Uber drivers make up 48%.
The data was compiled by CompareNI, which is run by Ian Wilson, using a sample size of over 45,000 taxi insurance policies and found the most common taxi driver is still those who have held their taxi badge for over 10 years, representing 52% of all drivers. The average age of all drivers also fell from 50 to 48.
There wasn’t much movement amongst the choice of taxis this year, understandably given waiting lists for new cars are, in some cases, now over a year long. The top five most popular cars for taxi drivers in Northern Ireland, across 2021 and 2022, were revealed as the Skoda Superb, Mercedes-Benz E220, Volkswagen Passat, Ford Mondeo and the Toyota Avensis - in that order, with only the Ford and the Toyota switching places in 2022. Interestingly the UK-wide top taxi is an electric vehicle, the Toyota Prius.
