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Fear and loathing in Los Cabtrade
Some of you seem to be wondering why your insurance premiums have risen this year. You’ve had another year of accident free motoring, yet you look at your renewal and see an increase for no apparent reason of around 20%.
I don’t know if you’re stupid, perhaps you are, or perhaps you might have been living in the same cave as Bin Robbin (Osama’s scouse cousin), but there appears to have been a new phenomenon hit the taxi trade during the past few years, the claim management company.
If you have a non fault accident and use one of these companies, you are no doubt grateful when told you’re not going to be off the road because they’ve arranged you a hire cab. You don’t know the cost, but around £150 per day appears to be the norm.
Is it just me or does £150 per day seem to be a colossal amount to hire a cab for, certainly I don’t know any firm locally hiring cabs out for £1050 per week. Indeed, earning that kind of cash on virtually any day in the provincial cab trade is simply beyond the majority of us. I remind you if you were earning £150 per day, you’re talking £900 per week (6 days) or £45K per year (50 weeks).
If you are earning £45K per year, a couple of grand for cab insurance would appear to be a fair price.
Naturally, not all claim management companies are as bent as the bloke off the X factor, but I heard a tale where a driver was contacted after an accident and asked by his insurance company whether or not it was really necessary to hire a ‘S’ class Mercedes. Sadly, the driver actually hired a Fiat Doblo.
So if you’re all wondering why your insurance is going through the proverbial roof, you should perhaps look around you, maybe even in your mirror.
Anyway, that’s my wee rant over for this month, let’s talk Law Commission.
The Department of Transport (DfT) invited the law commission to investigate existing taxi and private hire law. The major majority of the cab trade don’t seem too concerned about this, except Casey, who seems to be working to the principle that inviting the law commission into your house is like letting the Jehovah’s Witnesses in, when you’re halfway through watching a decent porn film.
The law commission, when it has finished consulting all stakeholders will then set up a consultative group of stakeholders. I don’t know the purpose of this group, I can only presume it’s to keep you all happy that the trade are being consulted.
Mid 2012 will then see a consultation paper being issued, with a 3 month public consultation to follow. Bearing in mind the taxi trade have already been consulted, this presumably will be the exact same type of consultation your wife has with you when buying a new pair of shoes.
The aims of the new legislation are obviously public safety, presumably they believe the public are not safe at the moment, and given your accident claims, they may have a point. They are also looking at availability, presumably because you’re not available, that’s right, everyday you leave your house to sit on cab ranks with the distinct goal of being as unavailable as possible.
They also want any new law to have clarity. Again, this is presumably because they believe the law isn’t clear enough now. I guess that’s where the new ‘super-dooper’ training schemes will kick in. You’ll all get trained to understand the new laws.
Of course, in order to do the above they need to understand the current set up. So they appear to be asking those who have tried to destroy the current regime brick by brick. People who have actively lowered standards and circumvented local licensing requirements by licensing vehicles elsewhere. Indeed, some of the people they appear to be talking with could be described as quite mad.
They will consider cross border hiring, which when you consider some of the people they are consulting with are very ‘big’ on cross border hiring, it should be quite educational.
The size of licensing areas will also be considered, after-all, bigger is better, just ask my wife. Better still ask the public of Durham, where as feared the City is overwhelmed by taxis each weekend, with little or no service in the rest of the county.
They will also look into links between licenses. I can only presume this has something to do with making the life of a private hire operator easier. I mean, why should a private hire driver need to produce a CRB check for every license he needs to do his job? Of course, I could point out that this has absolutely nothing to do with bad taxi law, and more to do with poor dialogue between local authorities, still, what do I know?
In terms of standards they will be looking at striking a balance between national and local, CRB checks, driver qualifications and driver training. You see, I’ve been writing in this magazine about how good you all are and behind your backs other appear to be working under the illusion you’re actually all crap.
The question of enforcement will also be considered. They want to clarify the powers and duties of licensing departments. Address the cross border issue (which I thought they already addressed). They also want to use the existing infrastructure. Which seems rather strange, considering to all intents and purposes the existing infrastructure has been responsible for the majority of f*ck up’s.
They will consider accessibility and disabled access. Here’s little old me thinking this was the job of the Equality act.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
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