I think the mention of "some dude yelling in some foreign language" is unnecessary. A person's native tongue says nothing of their intellectual capacity, nor of their ability to safely navigate a city.

Andedotally, I've been in cars with taxi drivers who were on the phone when I got in and talked for the entire ride, whilst navigating a city traffic, while also looking at their gps to work out where I needed to go. I did not feel safe in the slightest.

If it ever happens again I'd like to think I could ask them in a polite way to end the conversation or exit the cab, but how?

Granted, when you're yelling at people on the street, it's likely roadrage and unwarranted in any language but, admittedly, that sense of rationality is slightly depressed in this situation.

When I was in Egypt, I'd get in the cab, wear my seat belt and the driver will look at me weird. "So you don't think I can drive?"

A few years later, the police started enforcing the law and most cabs didn't even have seat belts. You would get in and find a sort of belt that doesn't even tighten, hacked together only to circumvent the law.

Not to say that in the US it is any better. If you wear a seat belt while in the back seat, you are considered weird. It is a stigma that is not easy to get rid of especially for the younger generation.

Side note: I do get some dude yelling in English too. So yes, it is irrelevant.

By definition doing anything outside of "normal" is weird, but in the case of social conventions it's usually because people just haven't thought about it enough. I'd rather be considered weird than be in a crash without a seatbelt on.

Citation? I am sure this is true for some people, but this does not match my own experience or what I can find when searching the web.

Just because sometimes it does not depends on you, and even the best drivers can have an accident.

I think people expect taxi drivers to get in less accidents because they are so seasoned. They can come within inches of other vehicles and dangers but with an indy 500 driving skill.

It seems like driving on the edge like this would encourage others to use a seat belt but alas when you have 3 people piled in the car for a short ride it gets overlooked. It really should be a standard to wear a seat belt.

Only kids school buses can get away with not wearing one and that is primarily because a school bus is so huge that others impacting it does little, and if a school bus driver had to seat belt all the kids it would take forever and the trip would be over before it started.

Specifically, a complaint that the bus should have had belts can be met with the reply, "But that's the way school buses have always been." In contrast, there is no similarly-reasonable-sounding reply to the complaint, "If only the supervising adult had done his job and ensured that the kid was buckled in!"

Same to the social norm of not wearing seatbelts in the backseat (which is where you usually are in a taxi).