Taxi Driver Online

Very recently I have got into a situation with an emergency ambulance driver. Basically I was outside A&E, a little bit further on from the A&E ambulance bay. In front of me was several (7-8) vehicles, mostly passenger transport ambulances and one of my fellow drivers. Effectively the vehicles infront formed three lanes of traffic abreast and were all unoccupied by their drivers - and ultimately totally blocking any vehicles passage from behind, including myself. We have a contract with Passenger Transport services whereby we transport discharged patients/day patients etc that cannot be serviced by ambulance transport themselves. We pick up from the same place as do the ambulances - afterall we are picking the same patients as them who are usually immobile, thus their need for a transport service.

Basically, an emergency ambulance came up behind me....... beeped several times....... so I did the only thing I could do by moving forward several feet virtually touching the vehicle infront. The ambulance moved further forward (NOW TOTALLY BLOCKING ME IN). after a few seconds the driver banged on my window and said "I'll give you 30 seconds to move", and then returned to his ambulance who had in it an emergency patient !! I got out, walked to the back of the car, then to his window and said "where do you want me to move to" ???????. Words were exchanged with him threatening to report me and that I shouldn't be there anyway.

i was called into licencing on Thursday to answer to a complaint by the ambulanceman of being abusive towards him. The licencing officer did nothing but patronise me, outlining the fact that they do a very stressful job, not the same as picking up people from their homes and dropping them off at pubs. The Head of Licencing was called in........and their attitude was not much better. Two issues, one of being verbally abusive when ASKED TO MOVE (irrelevant of where to), and being somewhere where adamantly they say I shouldn't have been. My operator says we have an agreement from the health authority concerned that can be confirmed by them in writing.

MY QUESTION MAINLY IS .......DOES THE LICENCING AUTHORITY HAVE ANY RIGHT TO TELL DRIVERS WHERE THEY CAN AND CANNOT PARK AT SUCH LOCATIONS AS HOSPITALS,RAILWAY STATIONS, SUPERMARKETS ETC. Any comments on the other mentioned issues would be appreciated. I have unfortunately got to go to a licencing committee now to see if I am fit and competent to hold a taxi badge ?????????

Your council has a duty to ensure you are a 'fit and proper' driver who adheres to it's licensing by-laws/conditions.

If you are parking illegal then your council has a duty to ensure you don't, however if you have permission by the land owner to park somewhere then the council can't say you are causing a nuisance.

If you was in the right, and had nowhere to go, then why on earth did you get into a heated conversation with the ambulance driver? What has rowing with the other driver achieved?

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IDFIMH

Taking a few photos of the parking situation at the time may have helped.

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Grandad,

Thanks for your reply. I agree with your comment........ however what did the ambulance driver achieve by INSISTING I move when it was absolutely obvious that I could not even if I wanted to. In effect he wasted 1 minute + arguing a futile argument when his priority should have been the blue light patient in the back. There is always two sides to the coin !!! I COULD NOT MOVE ANYWHERE - HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CONCENTRATING ON HIS JOB RATHER THAN AGGRESSIVELY ORDERING ME TO DO SOMETHING WHICH AT THAT TIME WAS NOT POSSIBLE ! As a taxi driver, I see ambulances dealing with emergency situations whereever they can/have to ! They park 'wherever' they can and deal with the situation....... finding a parking place is not important..........saving the patients life is !!!!!
BEFORE PEOPLE COMMENT ON THIS SITUATION, I must stress that I could not move forward because for whatever reason ..... a passenger transport ambulance had blocked off any exit route and was unoccupied at the time ! Therefore, no way forward ! Also the emergency ambulance with the issue had blocked me in from the rear......so no way backwards too. !!!!!

Have you ever considered another vocation?

To me you don't seem suited to this job.

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IDFIMH

I would suggest seeing if there were any vacancies for shelf stackers in Tesco......but i foresee a human rights violation if your asked to put tins of peas on too high a shelf.

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Draw up a sketch of the parking area noting the vehicles in front and behind you as a description .

Take some photographs of the area. and if you say the driver was abusive to you then make a complaint to his employers, he may then back off with his complaint.

I don't quite get this - what was he to do if he was blocked in and couldn't go anywhere and the ambulance driver was being a dick?

Adsa, as 'youbeenbusy' alludes I would get as much information about the sitauation as possible and explain in detail what happened.

Be apologetic about what happened, but don't go overboard about criticising the ambulance driver. Just say there was nothing you could do and there was considerable confusion, the traffic is often chaotic etc. Say if things got overheated then you apologise, but again don't try to heap all the blame onto the other driver.

Thanks Dusty Bin ........ that is all I am asking for......a common sense answer ! If one is blocked in front by vehicles and the ambulance from behind...... the only way out is 'up' or 'sideways'. Unfortunately my non James BOND vehicle is currently not equipped to do this ? I am prepared to eat 'humble pie' and apologise to the driver concerned. Regarding another vocation as suggested by a fellow member on this forum : Whatever my vocation is.... whether supermarket shelf filling or taxi driving...one is only expected to do the job that they are paid for within the 'constraints' of that particular job !!!

Not sure about that. This is a service industry, generally speaking the better the service you provide the better the rewards. If you only provide the minimum service you can only expect the minimum reward, both financially and job satisfaction.

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Grandad,

we're you parked at A&E?

If that comes to light you will be lucky to keep your badge.

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Clearly, but who's actions are now being questioned?

We can all shout our gob off, and I have medals for it, but there are consequences.

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IDFIMH

I don´t quite get it, why should Adsa be working at Asda, given of course the way he depicted the situation is true. It seems the other way round, the ambulance driver had lost his nerves in a critical situation with a patient in his care so he should be the one to be questioned about being fit and able for the job.

It is obvious we rank low in the hierarchy of transportation and ambulance drivers tend to look down on us, to them we do nothing important and are always in the way. Though I had no immediate trouble with them in England, I cannot say they are different in any way from how they behave in Germany and from there I can tell two little episodes about them.

First, the one where I was at a light and sort of over-took the queue for straight direction behind it, the ambulance in it, to turn to the right. The whole maneuver was not entirely according to the rules, but I was not in any way endangering anybody or taking advantage of anyone, for I was the only one heading for right direction, so why the ambulance was honking at me was clearly out of frustration and because he felt superior to me.

Now, I had the windows open and his horns were really loud and it almost gave me a heart-attack, so just out of a nervous reflex my arm jerked out of the window, my hand extended, followed by the extension of my middle-finger, though I miraculously was still able to hold back the rest of my fingers.

Unfortunately the driver and his co-driver must have mistaken my clearly nervous twitching for he reported it to the police and I had to show up at the station and explain the situation. I obviously did this sufficiently for nothing ever followed.

Secondly, (in Freiburg doctors visiting patients on an emergency schedule are regularly driven by cabs), I was waiting at the entrance of a house for the doctor, when an ambulance pulled up behind me. After a while a guy came to me, asking me to pull up further, so that they don´t have to wheel the stretcher for a distance of only 20 meters to the entrance of the house.

I did, yet to my grim satisfaction I later learned that there was no elevator in the house, so they had to carry the stretcher up and down 6 storeys!

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Jochen Lembke, Europe´s cab-driving writer and author of the best Hitch-hiker´s-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-volume-six ever written. Or else money back (haha.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read it he wasn't doing anything he shouldn't have been doing, he was blocked in by abandoned vehicles, an ambulance came along and blamed him for it all when he couldn't actually do anything to avoid it.

Indeed, it's obvious who's going to be judged to be wrong in such scenarios irrespective of who's actually to blame or is in fact blameless.

So if you mean he should just grovel to the powers that be even though he was in no way in the wrong, but to that extent then he may keep his licence, then I entirely agree.

But I suppose it's a Skull-type scenario - you can kiss ass and keep your job, or tell them where to stick it and keep your principles.

Of course, most people will opt for the former rather than the latter, and equally most people have little option.