Editorial Comment
Too many hours behind the wheel and group of professional drivers that are exempt provision is a starting point - it has been
the Elephant in the Room
from the Organisation of Working Time Act, a constant source of amazement to this
It is a sad fact of life that it needs a tragedy to
obviously because it is almost impossible to magazine how and why politicians have
affect a change in laws or working practices.
determine when a cabbie is driving and when managed to get away with its delimitation
Numerous examples of this can be seen from
they are ʻrestingʼ. policies for so long. If a politician stood up and
the engineers who repeatedly warned that the
championed a coach firm that was introducing
levies in New Orleans would not withstand
Nevertheless the tragic death of Gary a single driver for long haul destinations and
a category 4 hurricane, let alone category
Glymond from Barnsley who was knocked as a way of cutting costs the driver will drive
5, and their cries fell on deaf ears right up to
down and killed by a cabbie has reopened without stopping, he or she would be howled
Hurricane Katrina, to the appalling crash on the subject of taxi driver working hours, and down and an embarrassed party leader would
the M40 in 1993 in which 11 people died, 10 the salient fact is that there is not a body of be your screens denouncing the ʻmaverickʼ.
of them children when a minibus crashed into opinion, not even amongst taxi and private
a stationary vehicle on the hard shoulder. As a hire drivers that believe or can justify the But this is happening in Town Halls up and
result of the M40 crash, the fitting of seatbelts practice of driving shifts that exceed ten down the country as more and more officers
in minibuses became mandatory, something hours, let alone anecdotal evidence that nudge councillors into delimitation. Now
that the manufacturers had resisted, and was suggests some drivers work double those letʼs consider this, according to the Office of
a low or even a no priority by the government hours particularly at the weekend. Fair Trading (OFT), the demand for taxi and
suddenly leapt to the top of the political private hire provision has doubled in 20 years
agenda on the back of Road Safety groups However, it would take a u-turn in both local (Lord knows where they got the figure from),
and the mediaʼs banner ʻSomething must be and national government thinking, which up and if thatʼs the case a simple sum can be
doneʼ headlines. until now has been that more taxis and private made about the taxis and private hire vehicles
hire cars are to be encouraged, in fact it is needed to service a local authority safely.
How quickly the political landscape can now considered ʻbest practiceʼ to remove However, what taxi delimitation has proved
change, and without wishing to sound numerical controls. Under present legislation, that in urban areas and especially those in
macabre, at taxi talk we have long been of the a council cannot limit the amount of private the North of England, the rate of growth in the
opinion that the Taxi and Private Hire trade is hire vehicles, even if the area is swamped taxi fleet more than doubles, and sometimes
two bad crashes away from legislation, and if - by them, and an authority can only retain triples in the space of five years.
God forbid - a taxi driver was involved in a control of taxi numbers by holding regular
multiple death crash and it was subsequently and expensive surveys, and even then they This either reflects that there was or is a
found that he or she had been working 14-15 can be challenged in court by any would-be hitherto unknown level of demand for taxi
hours, or letʼs be honest, even longer, we vexatious litigant. provision, or that in certain regions of Britain
believe that it would be almost inevitable that being a taxi or private hire driver is one of the
the tradeʼs working practices would be subject We would suggest to safety campaigners few jobs that a person can do without having
to closer scrutiny. As it stands at the moment, that addressing the mindset of a quarter to gain too many qualifications, which in turn
the Taxi and Private Hire Industry is the only of a centuryʼs free-market thinking on taxi takes too long to obtain. If as we believe it
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