The cab driver leaned over and muttered: "Sometimes, I f**k 16-year-olds."

He leaned in close to me, sweeping an appreciative gaze over my young legs and white, denim mini skirt.

“How old are you?” he asked, and I obediently answered: Sixteen.

“Sometimes, I fuck 16-year-olds,” the cab driver responded.

Fortunately, when he subsequently tried to take me off-route to “go to an ATM”, I  insisted he take me straight home to my waiting parents and he complied.

But the experience left me sickened, and when my parents called the taxi company to complain, they were told the driver had no prior record so the matter would not be pursued.

Related: Radio star groped in a cab: “I can’t get rid of the feeling of him touching me.”

The thing is, the experience was not an isolated one. Two years ago, I filed a formal complaint with a taxi company after another frightening encounter.

The situation began when we arrived at my destination and the driver became frustrated I wasn’t paying quickly enough (I’d left my usual card a restaurant, so I asked that he keep the meter on while I transferred money).

Before I knew it, the cab took off at full speed, taking me along with it — and soon, what began as a bizarre overreaction escalated to a full-blown frightening incident that  left me literally begging for release.

As I relayed in my written complaint:

I didn’t know where he was taking me, and I told him he was terrifying me. I eventually started yelling, screaming at him to stop and asking if he was going to assault or rape me. He provided no clear answer but kept driving off yelling “you are not honest! You are not honest!”

I was crying, telling him that I had always intended to pay and would still pay him, but was truly fearing for my safety.

The situation had escalated so fast that I actually opened the car door and considered rolling out to escape. I would have been gravely harmed had I done so, so I stayed within the car and called the police. My back left-hand door remained open for at least two blocks and the driver kept driving at full pace- at least 45km/h.

There is no doubt that this driver knew full well how terrified I was during his joyride, and he only pulled over when I got the police on the phone.

When I complained to the cab company, though? The taxi driver was issued a “verbal warning”. Not a written warning, not a suspension, not an apology from the man who’d reduced me to a crying mess.

I was told, you see, that the man had a “clean record” within the industry (although a spokesperson later let slip the man may have had an ‘unconfirmed’ complaint against him in 2012.)

The complaint was recorded and passed onto NSW Roads & Maritime Services, but that’s the last I heard of it.

So are my encounters a manifestation of a wider problem within the taxi industry? After all, while media focus has been trained on the safety or otherwise of Uber recently, stories of assault and harassment by drivers of traditional taxis are nothing new.

Some of the most recently reported instances include a Sydney taxi driver who sexually and indecently assaulted a profoundly deaf school girl, and a Gold Coast driver who groped and kissed a drunk woman who fell asleep in the back of his taxi.

In January Radio Star Mel Greig also wrote of being groped by a taxi driver, saying of the incident: “I can still hear his disgusting moans and can’t get rid of the feeling of him touching me.”

Related: Radio star writes of her frightening encounter in a taxi.

Those disturbing attacks follow reports last year that a Perth taxi driver sexually assaulted five wheelchair-bound women in his vehicle, and that a Melbourne driver indecently assaulted an unconscious passenger during a trip — and so the list continues.

But my conversations with taxi industry representatives today suggested that the industry — facing tough new competition in the form of slick, cheap and increasingly popular UberX — is earnestly trying to put its best foot forward.

NSW Taxi Council Roy Wakelin told me prospective taxi drivers are subjected to “pretty thorough” testing and background checks, and that on the whole, the vast majority of drivers are safe. He admitted, however, that “occasionally things go wrong,” and that with a driver base that’s 96 percent male, he was always seeking to strengthen training around passenger safety.

“If there is a situation in which there is a serious complaint, it is in our interest to make sure that complaint is properly investigated,” he added. “We cannot tolerate behaviour from drivers that leave us feeling concerned.”

Victorian Taxi Association CEO David Samuel, too, emphasised the ongoing criminal checks to which taxi drivers are subject. Hopeful taxi drivers in that state are rejected if they’ve been convicted of sexual assault, he told me — and every month, each driver’s name is run through a police database to ensure their records remain squeaky-clean.

“That is the most important distinction” between the safety of taxis and Uber rides, he added.

Taking a similar swipe at the competition, Australian Taxi  Industry Association CEO Blair Davies previously told me that Uberx cars can only be tracked through the driver’s phone, which can be shut off. In contrast, he said, “taxis have two or three GPS devices hardwired into their systems” as well as a security camera that cannot be disabled by the driver.

Related: What is Uber, and is it actually safe to use?

(Uber itself fiercely defends its safety protocols, with Buzzfeed reporting one of its business executives even commented last year that women are “more likely to get assaulted by taxi drivers than Uber drivers”.)

So where does this leave us?

Obviously, #NotAllTaxiDrivers are dangerous sleazeballs. Most are decent, hard-working guys, perhaps supporting their studies or their families. Many, I’ve learned from as we chatted and bantered, happily and securely.

It was also heartening to learn, during interviews for this piece, that the driver who terrified me in the 2013 incident no longer works for Legion Cabs; the details were shady, but a spokesperson hinted that he left the network months after my complaint.

“When I was five, I was approached by a paedophile.”

But none of those things erase the fact that as a teenaged girl, I felt encroached upon and threatened by a man who was supposed to see me home safely. Or that as a grown woman, I was left crying and begging for a taxi driver to release me — only to be told that my experience wasn’t deemed worthy of a suspension.

None of these changes the traumatic experiences endured by the numerous other female passengers whose experiences ended much more violently than mine.

Related: Explain to me: What is Uber and is it actually safe to use?

So I will continue to catch taxis when they’re my only alternative to walking alone down a dark street. But I will always feel slightly on edge, will always sit in the back seat now, will never completely leave my phone out of reach in a taxi  — because I still don’t feel totally safe.

And despite the industry’s best efforts to talk the talk around women’s safety, that’s simply not good enough.

Have you ever felt threatened in a place you were meant to feel safe?