IN THE NEWS
A sleepy policeman has left a female taxi driver ‘frightened to drive’ after he went through a red light and smashed into her cab.
PLYMOUTH CABBIE ‘TOO AFRAID TO DRIVE’ AFTER POLICE CRASH work.
Police have revealed the officer involved had been “called out of bed” to attend an incident in the early hours of the morning when he confused a green traffic light arrow for his own lane’s light on Union Street. He crashed into Lynda Austin’s Mer- cedes people carrier as a result, and the taxi driver of 15 years says the inci- dent has left her too scared to go back to
“This is my liveli- hood,” said the 61-year-old, who is from Plymouth but lives in Looe with her husband, Antho- ny, also a taxi driver, “but they haven’t even apologised. She told the Ply- mouth Herald: “My cab is a write-off and personally I can’t even get into a car. I’m too fright- ened to drive.” Lynda was driving towards the Union Rooms on Sunday, August 9 at about 2am when the colli- sion happened. She described how she was travelling at “no more than
25mph” and had just gone through a green light when she was hit on the driver’s side of the cab.
“Next thing I know my air bag went off and I’d gone into the railing and traffic lights,” she said. “Someone came running over saying I needed to get out of the cab as they saw smoke, but it was just dust from the air bag. Luckily I didn’t have any pas- sengers in the car.” Lynda sustained multiple injuries in the crash. She is yet to receive the results of her X- ray, which will reveal
if she has any cracked ribs, but says she also bumped her head, has back pain, bruised her knees and hurt her chin where it hit the air bag.
She explained: “Seven police cars came to the scene, one ambulance, a marked Range Rover and the Fire brigade.
“They asked me if I
wanted to prosecute and I was thinking ‘yes’ straight away. But I just wanted to make sure I got an apology, which I haven’t had. I’ve heard nothing from the police.”
When contacted by the Herald, a spokesman for Devon and Cornwall Police confirmed the officer ran a red light. The spokesman said: “The officer,
having just been called out of bed to attend an incident as a negotiator, con- fused the green filter for the green signal. He was not in response mode. “The investigation is complete. The vic- tim has been consulted and the officer has undertak- en an internal driver alertness course as an alternative to prosecution.”
ST ALBANS DRIVERS ACCUSED OF CHERRY PICKING FARES
Taxi drivers have been accused of cherry picking fares at a popular city nightclub and leav- ing young people struggling to get home safely in the early hours of the morning.
Clubgoers living near Batchwood in St Albans maintain they have been turned away by taxi drivers because their journeys home are too short to clock up enough on the meter.
That is leaving them with no choice other than to share their taxi home, with its associated safety risks, or walk home from the club, which is situated well away from lit main roads. A 22-year-old wo- man, who lives near Club Batchwood and wishes to remain anonymous, told the Herts Adver- tiser that she had been rejected for a
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lift home on numer- ous occasions, most recently on the bank holiday weekend. She said: “When I was leaving Batch- wood the taxi driver locked his doors before I had a chance to get in. “He told me to go to another taxi but when I tried they all pointed me back to the taxi at the front of the queue, and the driver wouldn’t take me. “Luckily, there was a group going to Harp- enden that let me in their cab, otherwise I would have had to walk down the long wooded driveway. It’s not acceptable or safe.”
The Local Govern- ment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act is quite clear on the issue - it says that drivers who fail to pick up a fare with- out good reason could be prosecuted or dealt with on a
licensing level. Mudassar Yasin, general secretary of the St Albans and Harpenden Taxi Association (SAHTA), was very shocked to hear that drivers were denying cus- tomers a safe journey home. He said: “They can’t refuse the cus- tomers unless they have a good reason. That’s the law. “If they are breach- ing that law then customers need to make a complaint. They can’t carry on doing what they’re doing.”
St Albans Council said it had not received any com- plaints recently but a spokesperson com- mented: “The council takes any complaint about cherry picking seriously and com- plaints should be passed on to the council so we can investigate and take action.”
OCTOBER 2015
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