Throwing up in the back of a Chicago taxi will cost you $50, if the city’s cab drivers get their way.

“If someone throws up in the back of a cab, it’s no laughing matter to the cabdriver, who now has to take two hours to detail the cab,” George Lutfallah, a driver who publishes Chicago Dispatcher, a newspaper for cabbies, told The Chicago Tribune newspaper. “It’s hard to get that smell out if you’ve ever experienced anything like that.” Having spent a fair amount of time in London cabs and light aircraft, I can sympathise.

The city’s cab drivers are also motivating for a 22% fare hike as well as raised fees on other extras, but Chicago mayor Richard Daley has reportedly balked at the rate hikes, citing the tough economy as a reason not to raise fares.

Naturally, it’s the vomit fee that has received all the attention rather than the plight of America’s struggling taxi drivers.

Offering a novel approach to the matter, Zack Parsons of Something Awful said the vomit fee represented a premium service from the city of Chicago. Parsons wrote: “I don’t think these cabbies are trying to charge you for puking, I think they are offering you the premium service of vomiting in their taxi.

“America was built on the idea of premium services. This is how the wealthy are able to have so much more fun than everyone else. They can behave however they want as long as they have the money to cover the premiums!”

And that’s what’s great about America, folks: innovation!

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