Taxis

[nipper]

Your analogy of a bad meal in a restaurant is patronising in the extreme.

 

Regarding beeping horms. I bet if you asked every taxi driver on the Island if they used the horn to alert customers, they would all deny they ever did it.

 

Anyway, you need to work on getting yourselves a better image, because at the moment it ain't good.

[Paul H]

Your analogy of a bad meal in a restaurant is patronising in the extreme.

 

Regarding beeping horms. I bet if you asked every taxi driver on the Island if they used the horn to alert customers, they would all deny they ever did it.

 

Anyway, you need to work on getting yourselves a better image, because at the moment it ain't good.

I am not picking on restaurants but merely making my point that individual businesses are quite rightly seen as ‘Individual’, the taxi trade however divided it might be is all too often considered as one and the same. I can speak only for myself when I say that my company is in many ways different to other taxi companies and I am trying to emphasis the point that we are not all the same.

 

As the MD of our company, I can give further assurance that it is our policy not to use horns to make our customers aware of our arrival. The method most commonly used nowadays is by phoning or texting the customer a couple of minutes prior to our arrival. At present this is done manually, however in the future we expect to utilise our automated system through the GPS controlled data dispatch software.

Digitax Mobile Data Terminal

 

Any suggestions on how we can improve our image will be gratefully considered, although I obviously cannot do anything about the taxi drivers who less fortunate than those who work for me!

[Lonan3]

There is a particular Douglas taxi driver, who has no working seat belts in his cab, thinks its legal to drive through red lights and that its also legal to send a text message as he is driving.

 

I would very much appreciate it if you could PM me with any details you have of this individual. If there is anything I can do to get such a vehicle and driver taken off the road, I will be more than happy to do it. Inconsiderate and dangerous idiots such as this are the kind of people who give us all a bad name.

 

Paul H Posted Today, 10:46 AM

 

Finally, on the matter of sounding your horn. In the regulations handed down to us by our Road Transport Licensing Committee, you will find that it is now illegal for a driver to use his or her horn solely for the purpose of alerting passengers of his or her arrival. Not to mention that it is illegal under the provisions of the Road Traffic Act.

 

That is being somewhat selective. The regulations about using your horn to announce your arrival add "unless there is no alternative available." This is to cover situations in which, for example, the driver arrives at a pick-up point and finds himself outside a block of flats with no identification on the doorbells. If the caller has - as is often the case - ensured that no telephone number number is available to call him/her on, it is difficult to announce that you're there, probably blocking traffic, waiting for him/her to make an appearance.

In a perfect world, passengers who call taxis would actually be ready and waiting to go when it arrives - or at least taking frequent glances out of the window.

Incidentally, although the RTLC have 'handed down' these regulations, it is questionable whether they are actually entitled to do so as, under the terms of the Act, it is only the DoT who can do so! (Not that I'm really complaining because I actually advised them on most of the contents of the 'Code of Conduct.')