SAD B*****D
Well, here we go again folks... trying to choose a standout winner in the category where everyone is a winner. Loser, more like, but any- way... it’s always a tricky one. This year’s crop of Sad B*****ds range from bungling burglars, such as those in Haverhill who ordered a taxi as their getaway car in their own names. Or how about the Hull thief who loaded a stolen 32-inch plasma TV into a taxi... just a small tri- fle, what? Then there was the bungling Teesside burglar, whose call for a taxi from the land line of the victim gave his game away in July. Clever. Then we have road rage drivers acting over the top, turning cars over, or stealing a taxi to then crash into seven cars. Speaking of driving skills (!), how about the Cambridge PHV driver who drove through the train barriers as they were coming down. Also there was the Plymouth driver who was done for speeding three times on the same day – on the same stretch of road. But then you have the Derby driver who’d obviously been such a skilful driver he had to ask a friend to take his DVLA points. Of course we had to have at least one head-banger type incident dur- ing the Olympics, so the star there was the taxi driver who jumped off the Tower Bridge in protest against the access restrictions for taxis during the event. ‘Head banger’ it may well have been and all; the police said at the time the guy could have broken his neck by pulling such a stunt, as the Thames is so not crystal clear you wouldn’t be able to see what you were jumping into. What fun. Cabbies were victim to saddies as well: one was run over by a drunk in Durham, and another was bashed with a crutch by a passenger. But somehow cabbies outnumbered passengers in the saddie stakes this time round, such as the cabbie who stole money from women aged 82 and 95. Then there was the Charnwood driver who watched a football match on his mobile phone whilst driving; you’ll remember him from the December issue. Of course he didn’t do things by halves: he had picked up two undercover council officers on a swoop, then put his mobile on the dashboard and tuned in to watch the match as he was driving along. Oh, and he also overcharged them for the journey. But apart from that, he did OK. But here we get down to it. This year’s runner-up was just in the wrong place at the wrong time: the cabbie in Somerset who sneezed and wrecked an iconic 15th cen- tury monument in Cheddar, as pre- sented in our May edition. Poor guy... he was gut- ted.
The
monument didn’t feel too clever either. And how about the drivers who abandoned their sick passengers whether
baby
age or student with appendicitis. And this year’s winner was the driv- er who refused to take a sick baby to hospital. One of our mate Mr Littlejohn’s favourite sayings: you couldn’t make it up.
PAGE 62 2012
Elsewhere this year
This category always tends to revulse US at the behaviour of some people in our industry but as to our first story, the offend- ers were two bungling burglars caught by police after they used as their getaway car a taxi! Not only did they use their own names but the police were able to arrest them as they stored their stash in their living rooms March page 12. Elsewhere this month in a case of road rage on Tyneside, cabbie John Laws rammed a woman’s Land Rover onto its roof in a road rage attack. Newcastle
Crown
Court heard how Miss Park was driving along the Coast Road around last May towards Newcastle when hot-head Laws raced up behind, tail- gating and flashing his lights. Miss Park pulled over to let him past and as
he overtook her she raised her middle fin- ger at him. This enraged the taxi driver further and he swerved in front of her at 70mph, before slowing down and moving so they were level with each other. The furious cabbie appeared to mouth the words: “I’m going to kill you” as he swerved his vehicle from side to side. March page 22. In April a Macclesfield driver stole hundreds of pounds from two elderly women pas- sengers. Jonathan Boland, 40, was described as ‘despicable’ for steal- ing from the vulner- able victims aged 82 and 95 after driving them home from sepa- rate shopping trips. Boland admitted two charges of theft and one of possessing cannabis. One victim said she is ‘on pins’ since the theft. The other said
PHTM JANUARY 2013
BRISTOL DRIVER REFUSED TO TAKE SICK BABY TO A&E
A taxi driver refused to take a sick baby to the Accident and Emergency depart- ment at a hospital - because the 17- month-old passenger vomited in his cab. According to the Western Daily Press, the child’s mother, Udo Nwogu, claims the driver halted an emergency journey to Bristol
Children’s
Hospital and declined to continue until he was paid a £90 clean- ing charge. She told the driver that her son Destiny was suffering from dehydration
and
urgently needed to be seen by a doctor. But the driver only agreed to complete the journey when the charge was paid - leading to a 30-minute delay in getting the baby to hospital. Mrs Nwogu has made a formal complaint about
the driver’s
conduct to Bristol City Council which is now investigating the mat- ter. She believes the driv- er should have driven her poorly son to hos- pital as a priority and worried about any damage to the taxis interior afterwards.
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