EVERY taxi in the state should be fitted with tamper-proof cameras to protect women passengers from sexual predators, experts said yesterday.

While driver training and passenger education can go a long way to heading off trouble, both the taxi industry and rape experts agree that round-the-clock, in-car surveillance is the best way of making cabs safer for all concerned.

The warning that Sydney's cabbie network needs a massive overhaul follows the conviction of a taxi driver who somehow dismantled the vehicle's security camera before raping a helpless teenager.

NSW Taxi Drivers Association's Michael Jools said: "It shouldn't be possible to turn off the camera - there should be a 24-hour automatic sending of camera surveillance."

Mr Jools said the current sexual harassment component in driver training also needed to be boosted with the standard teaching little more than "basically don't touch your passenger."

NSW Rape Crisis Centre manager Karen Willis warned that taxis were particularly vulnerable places for women, who were counting on getting home safely.

"People often have had a few drinks and are doing the right thing not driving home, they expect to get home safely, crawl into bed and pass out," Ms Willis said.

She said the industry was ripe for offenders to take advantage of defenceless passengers. "If there is higher level of sex offenders employed in the cab industry it is because cab companies haven't taken measures to ensure safety - like we know child sex offenders try to get employment where they have contact with children."

With more than 7000 taxis and 22,375 taxi drivers - of whom only 715 are female - Ms Willis said it was simply not good enough to have a flawed security system.

"It should be a requirement of all taxis to have security cameras that take in the back seat and those images should go back to a central location where there can be random viewing," she said.

"There should be emergency buttons in there for clients so they can hit the button."

Compounding the issue is current CCTV cameras that are obsolete according to industry insiders.

Even a 2007 Ministry of Transport report into taxi safety found that "many police are unaware of how to correctly process and store the video images taken from taxi security cameras."