... such appalling drivers? Is it cultural? Do you have to pass a ****-driving course to do it?
I assume that carefully disconnecting all your brake lights and both dipped beams is absolutely essential to passing the MOT, as is a blindness for red traffic lights and an absolute disregard for other road users.
I have, today, witnessed one minicab overtake a line of waiting traffic to shoot through a red light at roadworks, and within 10 minutes another one pull out into oncoming traffic without looking with cars literally swerving around him. Yet another did a U-turn right in front of me that needed an emergency stop to avoid a collision.
Yesterday there was one embedded in a lamp-post nearby (interestingly it appears that if you wedge a box of tissues on the dashboard and then set the airbags off it results in much blood inside the car and an ambulance visit, but at least you can blow your nose.
Presumably there's a bit of corruption going on at the various MOT test centres that handle these things?
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Locally the standard of minicabbers has got much worse since a loophole was found in the local rules. Basically, your minicab does not have to be registered in the borough if it is a licences hackney cab in another borough, so now loads of ordinary cars registered as hackneys in lackadaisical Rossendale are in use on the Stockport fleets.
Driving is so abismal I automatically give all minicabs a wide berth, and have advised family to call me rather than a cab.
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Judging by the poor driving I strongly suspect that many mini-cabbers in London don't actually have a genuine driving licence (got a mate to take the test for them, etc.). And whenever the Police have their ANPR traps a high number of those pulled seem to be mini-cabs which tends to suggest that they are not taxed or insured either.
Having said that, black cabs in London are noticeably more pushy/worse drivers when they have a fare on board as they try to demonstrate that they are not wasting time.
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I won't give you my essay on minicabbing as a noble profession in the 1970s because I have already.
Suffice it to say that slow drivers who didn't know the way wouldn't have cut the mustard in central and South London in my day. But if you were quick and courteous there was a lot of money about in the seventies and damn great tips were not unusual. I was offered a getaway driver job by a couple of professional burglars one night. I declined politely, emphasizing how flattered I was but driven by an ingrained bourgeois early warning system. They were perfectly cool about it of course.
Great stopgap profession for a natural hooligan, car freak and timewaster wondering whether to become an intellectual. My father complained that it had made my language vulgar.
It certainly had, and it's never recovered.
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Why are mini-cabberists... - Alastairw
