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The leader of the striking cabbies was addressing the TV cameras when an elderly woman with a walker inched up to the same corner in search of a taxi.

"What are the chances of this old lady right here?" a uniformed cop named Grimm asked.

The strike leader, Bhairavi Desai, was insisting that 90% of the yellow cab drivers were off the road. The elderly woman needed only raise a frail hand off the walker's grip for the truth to appear in the form of Taxi 1Y28.

"That's like textbook, right?" Grimm said.

The amiable Grimm and another cop helped get the walker in the trunk and the woman into the backseat. A striker spoke to the working driver through the front passenger window.

"After this fare, go home," the striker said.

"Yeah, okay," the driver said.

As in Yeah, okay, sure I will. The driver continued on up West End Ave. with his elderly passenger. The striker returned to the rally wearing a "No GPS" button, a reference to the Global Positioning System devices the city wants installed in all taxis along with a credit card reader and an interactive video screen.

The strikers have called GPS an invasion of privacy and an assault on their dignity, but in truth it serves as little more than a high-tech trip sheet such as they now must fill out by hand.

The GPS only comes on when the cabbie starts the meter, as the one in Taxi 4F58 did earlier yesterday morning, when a reporter boarded in Brooklyn. The GPS recorded the time and place with no apparent detriment to the driver, Williams Melendez.

As the cab started off, you needed only touch the "map" square on the video screen built into the back of the driver's seat to see a dot marking your progress down Flatbush Ave.

The city will not be monitoring these GPS readings en route, but you had to wonder why not. A little computer interfacing, and GPS could stop cabs from running red lights and speeding, as it has with waste disposal trucks in Connecticut.

You also wondered why there is not a video map for the driver to provide directions if needed. That might make the device feel less like a spy than a tool. Big Brother would seem a little more brotherly.

The reporter found the best button on the screen to be the one that allows you to turn it off and silence the chattering voices that make the system more like Big Bother. You rode on into Manhattan in peace, though Melendez said this would end for him when the next fare automatically set the video screen going again.

"Loud," he noted.

A considerable number of other yellow cabs were working as Melendez headed up Sixth Ave. A black livery cab pulled up alongside him at a light.

"Why you not strike?" the livery driver asked.

"Why should I?" Melendez said. "I've had GPS for a month."

Melendez allowed to the reporter he is not exactly fond of GPS.

"To be honest, I would rather not have it," he said.

But, his main complaint was with the credit card reader. These transactions take three minutes or more if the card's magnetic strip is worn, a long time when you are on the hustle.

"If the credit card doesn't work and they don't have cash, then what do you do?" he asked.

At W. 65th St., he pulled over and stopped the meter, automatically registering the end of the trip via GPS. The reporter climbed out and Melendez drove on, not having mentioned the $15 to $45 cabbies such as he who lease must pay weekly toward the new gismos. He also had not mentioned the 5% surcharge drivers pay on each credit card transaction.

That 5% is a big issue for many of the strikers, particularly because only a third of it goes to the credit card companies and the rest is split between the GPS operators and the cab owners.

THAT IS a clear injustice with which the strikers could have generated public sympathy. They would have done better to wear buttons saying, "No 5%" rather than "No GPS" at the rally.

After the elderly lady with the walker was picked up by a nonstriking cab, there came the clip-clop of horse hoofs. Two hansom cabs went by on the way to Central Park.

Maybe future tourists will seek a taste of the old days by riding in a cab that has no GPS or video screen or electronic voices.

You actually can beat City Hall sometimes, but you can never beat progress.