Survey: taxi passengers lose 200,000 phones, 11,000 laptops

We've left a fair amount of loose change in the backs of taxis, along with various scraps of paper that have drifted out of our pockets as we've searched for a crumpled twenty. And we've counted ourselves pretty lucky that we've never lost a wallet or housekeys or a prototype cellphone-camera-DVR-nosehair trimmer (hey, you know we get to roll with the best at Engadget). But according to a new survey, we're even luckier than we thought. Turns out that, worldwide, over 11,000 laptops, 31,000 PDAs, and a whopping 200,000 cellphones have vanished into the backs of cabs over the past six months. One silver lining: the survey says that the vast majority of lost gear gets returned to its owners (which we'll then assume means that the vast majority of gear is probably outmoded, and thus undesirable). We're still not sure if the same is true of the dentures and artificial limbs the survey cites as also turning up in cabs, but we'll cross our fingers and hope for the best.