Taxi Driver Online

Four taxi drivers fail to give Jasmine Rankin a lift

https://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk ... nkin-life/


Image: Somerset County Gazette

A WHEELCHAIR user claims FOUR cabbies declined to pick her up at a taxi rank in the centre of Taunton.

Jasmine Rankin says the fifth driver then overcharged her by setting his meter running while he prepared the ramp to enable her to get into the vehicle.

Payroll worker Jasmine, 27, had enjoyed her first night out in months with her fiancé Luke before the couple made their way to the rank in Corporation Street, when the evening turned sour.

She said: "The first driver in the queue just drove off straightaway. I said to Luke, 'Maybe he's had a call'.

"Then the next driver pulled up to the front of the rank. He told me he had a medical exemption, but when I asked to see the evidence, he said he'd left it at home.

"The third driver just completely blanked me and simply drove off.

"The fourth taxi driver said he wasn't wheelchair accessible."

Jasmine said she was so incensed she was having "a meltdown", but calmed down when the fifth driver agreed to take the couple home to Holway.

"I was grateful," said Jasmine. "But he started the meter before getting the ramp out of the back and setting it up.

"The meter was on £6 before we left the rank."

Jasmine added: "I'm really cross. It's discrimination. It makes the whole experience anxious and horrible.

"Sometimes I'm on my own and vulnerable and not being able to get a taxi is worrying."

Mike Davis, owner of A1 Ace Taxis, is adamant none of the five drivers worked for his firm.

He said: "The rules are really clear.

"On a rank, you have the right to refuse to take a passenger, but there has to be a reasonable reason.

"But if you have a licensed hackney carriage and that vehicle is wheelchair accessible, you should be taking wheelchair customers from the rank.

"Unfortunately, some people who drive independently don't really want to serve disabled customers because it takes longer.

"Under the Disability Discrimination Act, you have to treat a disabled person in the same way as you treat an able-bodied person.

"You should turn the meter on at the start of a journey, not when you are loading and unloading the ramp before the start and after the end of the journey.

"At A1 Ace Taxis everybody is very clear about what the rules are and we embrace them because it's only fair."

For a start, headline suggests her name is well known, and as it's a local run and it looks like she's a regular, with very distinctive appearance, maybe the front driver knew it was a shortish trip, so took off when he saw her. It's a bit vague on Google, and the article is a bit vague about the trip, but I'm guessing maybe 1.5 miles max, maybe even less than a mile, but certainly less than two miles.

So first driver scarpers, then there's a kind of knock-on effect, and the next few drivers won't do the run either.

Let's face it, if she'd being wanting to go to Bristol Airport on the meter, drivers would probably have been falling over each other to do the run.


Good to know he knows precisely what his drivers are up to on the ranks.

Was assuming Taunton HCs were all WAVs, but it's the good old granfather rights for the saloon plates, which may mean that the refusenik who claimed his vehicle wasn't a WAV was a legitimate refusal.


Who'd have expected that the saloon driver would think that the grandfather rights for saloon HCs was a good idea.

Not something I'd ever argue for myself

I assume that's her wheelchair in the photo in which case it would have been too heavy for my ramps when I had a wav and would have been a nightmare to secure that's probably more to do with it

Wheelchair users need educating about safe loading and working they do not have the right to expect a driver to injure their back or wreck their equipment loading them !



which illustrates another problem with wavs and that is it takes 10 minutes to load and unload at each end compared to 1 minute for non wheelchair users

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

I see that empathy course SKDC sent you on really worked

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Former taxi driver

Indeed, I'd forgotten all about the powered chair angle

(Was about to say 'electric chair' there, but thought that might be misconstrued )

Problem is the more drivers refuse, the more other drivers will follow suit.

However the lady needs to make a note of their plate numbers and report them.

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IDFIMH

Too heavy ? I’m certain my Vito’s ramps are rated up to 300kg, I know the E7’s are. As for securing, most of the modern electric chairs have a dedicated securing point on the side to fix the carabiner to, it doesn’t look clear in the photo if this one has though, if it doesn’t I wouldn’t have took her either (there’s no way Id try to use the curved bars to secure them to) but I would have explained this to her.

I always only put the meter on after loading but I used to find that often the wheelchair jobs were very short journeys from Nursing homes so from turning up at the Nursing home to clearing at the outpatients would take 25 to 30 minutes of which the actual journey was only 3 to 4 minutes and the fare would meter £2.80 so before fuel and other costs that is £5.60 an hour

In the mean time most of the other cars would have managed 2 jobs each not all taxi drivers want to work for less than minimum wage whilst their colleagues earn more

On top of which a wav is a lot more expensive than a saloon car to buy, maintain and run

Yes in an ideal world every driver would take turns at picking up but I can understand why they don't

Equality for wheelchair users means inequality for taxi drivers and people do not like being at a disadvantage

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector