Diary Of An ADI

This is a very old story and all links in it are now dead and so removed. And DSA is now DVSA, of course.

When I saw the headline, my first thought was “about time”. But as soon as I started reading the story in This is South Devon I realised that it wasn’t all it seemed.

When you drive (or teach people to drive) for a living, other motorists behaving stupidly, dangerously, and arrogantly is a major annoyance. One of the worst groups has to be taxi drivers, and it really makes you wonder how the hell many of them get through their taxi test.

The DSA’s website says:

The test is more demanding than the practical test taken by learner drivers, and has elements that relate specifically to driving a taxi or PHV.

So how is it that so many taxi drivers don’t seem to have a clue how to drive safely or with other road users in mind? If they’ve been tested, it can only be deliberate the way they behave.

You can be driving behind a taxi and it will stop – literally stop dead – to pick up a fare. It won’t care if it is blocking the road completely or who is behind it – it will still stop without any warning. You may come across one that has blocked a narrow residential road as you turn round a blind bend (blind bends and other danger areas mean nothing to taxis).

They will stop during the rush hour on yellow lines, on zig-zags at crossings, in restricted stopping zones, or anywhere else that is convenient to them (an individual) irrespective of the mayhem it causes to thousands of people trying to negotiate the rush hour while they block off part of the road – and then pull away as soon as they’re ready to go, forcing everyone to stop.

They pull off without warning and will happily block half of the road while they emerge into free-flowing traffic which has no reason to stop for them other than to avoid a collision. They sit two abreast (blocking off half the road) talking to each other outside their HQ (anyone who doesn’t believe me should go past Southside Cars in Clifton – daytime or night, it won’t make any difference to the taxis). Hazard lights are a taxi’s standard method of communicating that it is illegally parked half on the pavement, straddling double yellow lines.

Taxis will drive at a speed to suit them – very slowly when between jobs, usually in the right-hand lanes; very fast when on a job. When driving on  a job, overtaking on the inside, lane changing, and cutting up is mandatory. If a call comes through while they’re sauntering along or pulling away at traffic lights very slowly, then a U-turn can be carried out in any location and in any volume of traffic using any method that occurs to the driver at that particular moment in time.

The manoeuvre will come as a big surprise to everyone else, because taxis don’t use signals (except occasionally for hazard lights when they are within 500m of where their sat nav has told them they should be and they’re looking for a house number). The idea of driving a few metres in order to do a turn in the road or a corner reverse safely – or going around the block – is not something which a taxi driver is capable of considering. It has to be an immediate and often illegal or dangerous turn right there and then (a favoured manoeuvre outside Southside Cars when a call comes through is the U-turn in the road on zig-zags, usually misjudged (so becoming a turn in the road), and often involving going around a pedestrian island the wrong way depending on where they were parked).

Bearing all this in mind, I was thinking that someone in Devon had got wise to all this and started to do something about it.

It turned out to be three drivers parking a bit outside the overflowing taxi rank, or in a bus bay. In other words, bureaucratic codswallop.

I mentioned a week or two ago that Aviva had put the RAC up for sale. They’re asking a pretty penny for it, as well. An offer of around £1 billion would secure an immediate sale.

Aviva paid £1.1 billion six years ago – but they also took on existing debts and liabilities for pensions. The article here says that they may have to keep hold of £300 million worth of pension liabilties when they sell.

When Aviva bought the RAC the deal included BSM and Auto Windscreens – both of which were sold off for something between £500-600 million.

Let’s just remind ourselves what has happened to BSM (bought by Aviva, screwed, sold, screwed again, sold again) and Auto Windscreens (in administration). I’m not sure how well Lex Vehicle Leasing (also sold) is doing.

I’m sure there is a lesson to be learnt here about buyouts, particularly from those who have now lost their jobs.