saved me a lot of time in the long run. I did think at one point of going to licensing to get the council-controlled CCTV data downloaded for them to use as a demonstration on how to turn a bad situation around.


Driver interview


passenger door and extracting such customers, or at the very least screamed a lot louder back at them. In past years I have left a few sat down in the road whilst I drove off leaving them in a cloud of thick diesel smoke.


However, experience goes with age and I eventually got her to calm down and even when she opened the door yet again, told her it would be best if I got her to her destination to make sure she’s safe. That was mainly to cover myself and I was actually hoping she just got out. She agreed, so I set off, but told me I would be doing it for free which caused me to put the brake on, hard. However, with the assurance of the old boy in the back that I would be paid, I carried on.


She then decided to change the destination to a pub, much to the disagreement of the old boy, but as that was very near, I headed there. She got out but the old boy wanted to carry on to get home. I told him she was very lucky that I had picked them up and not one of the many drivers who would have acted very differently in the situation. He said she is always like that when she drinks.


It’s strange because whilst I was pleased with myself that I had de-escalated the situation, I was also oddly annoyed with myself that I had not had the satisfaction of retaliating against her vile behaviour. This is even disregarding the CCTV because the way she acted would have fully justified her ejection from the car. I’m very pleased however that audio was running all the time right from the beginning, regardless of what anyone else considers about this, because her vile behaviour, language and goading would not have been picked-up. Additionally, it would not have been picked up that I was extremely polite right from the start.


It actually took a couple of days for my ‘annoyance’ to subside, despite knowing that a de-escalated situation


PHTM APRIL 2025


I recently attended a licensing interview with a driver over a very serious matter. Obviously, I can’t go into details but it was a tragic case of where the driver had run over someone at a crawling speed who was laying down in the road, at night, dressed in black. That person then sadly died a couple of days later and it was found that multiple drugs had been taken. This resulted in a prosecution and conviction against the driver (although with no imprisonment) and the revocation of the taxi driver licence.


The driver had simply set out that night to work and whilst it is extremely tragic that someone lost their life it ended up with two parties being affected; the family of the person who lost their life, but also the family of the driver.


So, these are two examples of where two taxi drivers have had to deal with situations where drugs/alcohol have been the main factor. One fairly easy to deal with, but one with a terribly sad ending.


Both of these scenarios could happen to any of us. Devolution


This is still ongoing, with the council very obviously wanting to swallow up surrounding areas to qualify for Devolution status. Yet the taxi trade here is still no closer to


knowing what is going to happen.


Considering Brighton & Hove Council lost £51m on the hare-brained, doomed i360 monstrosity on the seafront, albeit under a Green council at the time (now Labour), and recently have literally had to give it away to an ex-dragon from Dragons Den, and cannot even fix the stone age state of the roads, I dread to think of how they will run an area three times as big!


At the time of writing this I’ve just heard that Kier Starmer has now ordered councils to get on and fix the pothole or lose funding, Brighton & Hove Council take note!


Oh... and by the way. There is another Uber driver strike planned for May, just in case you’re an Uber driver and didn’t know about it…. Just like the last one you didn’t know about.


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