In Naples and Milan the solution is more satisfactory: the service is allocated to the driver who claims to be closest to the customer's address, and the risk of cheating is countered by the threat of punishment. Drivers have the right to police one another and, if in doubt about a call commandeered by another driver, are entitled to drive to the same address and, if they reach it first, to claim the customer for themselves. They may also report the culprit and have his radio disconnected for a period of time that increases according to the number of previous offenses. Other drivers are alerted to distrust driver X and monitor his behavior closely. Delays · cannot be attributed to unforeseen traffic problems (except for accidents), because drivers agree to assume that they should be capable of taking normal variations in traffic into account. Any incorrect estimate, in other words, is interpreted as evidence of cheating.

Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Busi…, loc. 590