Why Ride in the back of a taxi?

Why Ride in the back of a taxi?
It would be perfectly feasible to sit next to a taxi driver in the front seat, rather than riding in the back, but I think that taxi drivers prefer to be separated a bit from their passengers, who are in some cases noisy, talkative, or otherwise are potentially distracting, and drivers have to pay attention to their driving, and do not want too much distraction. There may also be some historical tradition that has been kept from the days when taxis were horse-drawn. In an old horse-drawn taxi-cab, passengers rode in a carriage and the driver rode outside the carriage on top, where he could hold the reins to the horses.