Taxi Driver Online

It's always difficult to work out whether these stories are genuine misunderstanding or whether the driver just got [edited by admin] off and found the lure of more lucrative runs too much.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/output/2005 ... 1975t0.asp

By Graham Huband

A WHEELCHAIR USER has hit out at a Dundee taxi company, claiming to have been abandoned in a street as he returned home from a night out.

Cerebral palsy sufferer Alan Drummond (22) said he was left feeling scared and vulnerable after being dumped on the pavement in an unfamiliar city street on Thursday night by a taxi driver.

Mr Drummond had been at a Christmas party at a church in Bright Street, Lochee, when he called Handy Taxis for a lift home at around 9.45 pm.

He asked to be taken to his house in Laing Place, but problems began when the driver misheard and took him to Leng Street instead.

Mr Drummond protested he was in the wrong place but he claims the driver ordered him to leave the cab and then drove off.

He said, “I phoned Handy’s thinking I would get home pretty early, but when I got in the taxi the driver was going on that he didn’t have enough clamps in his taxi for the wheelchair.

“He wasn’t effing and blinding but he was a bit upset.

“When we got to Leng Street I told him that it wasn’t where I wanted to be, but he said to me to get out of his taxi.”

Being alone in a dark street at night, Mr Drummond had to seek the help of strangers and he spent around 10 minutes looking for somebody to talk to.

Fortunately, two good samaritans noticed Mr Drummond and stopped to see if he was all right.

They contacted his mother and waited with him until a second cab came to take him home.

Mother Norma said she was “fuming” at her son’s treatment and had made a number of phone calls to the taxi firm in question to register her complaint.

She said, “Alan is not very authoritative and it is easy for somebody like that taxi driver to disregard him. He was left abandoned in the street in an electric wheelchair. I was furious.”

A spokesman for Handy Taxis said the driver had been interviewed by management after the complaint came to light.

He said, “The driver came in and explained his side of the story.

“He said that he assisted the wheelchair user out of the taxi and asked if he was all right.

“The passenger replied yes and said he lived a short distance up the street so the driver left.”