Taxi Driver Online

Fears taxi drivers will quit over rising violence

TAXI chiefs have warned that drivers will quit the job if attacks on cabbies continue to rise.

The warning came as figures obtained by the Lancashire Telegraph showed that assaults on both private hire and hackney cab drivers continue to increase in East Lancashire.

The statistics show that assaults with injury nearly doubled in the past year from 14 to 23, assaults without injury increased from 21 to 30 and racially-aggravated common assaults grew from five to nine. All those figures are up by around a third since 2012.

In total, there were 307 crimes committed against people listing their occupation as taxi driver or hackney cab drivers last year, but trade bosses said incidents were being significantly underreported.

Dave Lawrie, chairman of the Rossendale Taxi Association, claimed the number of attacks was closer to 1,000.

Mr Lawrie, who has his own CCTV system to reduce attacks and provide evidence, said: “It’s something that’s increasingly worrying.

“We’re seeing more and more assaults on a daily basis. The cases that you’re talking about are only the ones the police are aware of. You’re probably looking at 1,000 in terms of general assaults, racially-motivated attacks and financial attacks.

“The problem is a lot of drivers don’t bother reporting it to police because when they do they are told there is not enough evidence to do anything about it, or, on a busy Friday or Saturday night, they have to wait hours for the police to arrive and end up losing a lot of money in potential fares.”

Blackburn Taxi Association chairman Mohammed Younis said: “It’s concerning but assaults have been happening throughout my 40 years as a taxi driver in Blackburn.

If it continues to rise more people will start to quit because nobody wants to go to work with the fear of being attacked.”

Meanwhile, the figures also showed that woundings went up from one to two, criminal damage to vehicles increased from 85 to 90 and making off without payment dropped from 59 to 57.

Overall in Lancashire assaults with injury fell from 46 to 45, assaults without injury dropped from 63 to 60 and racially-aggravated common assaults rose from eight to 10.

A police spokesman said: “We would encourage anyone who has been the victim of a crime to contact police immediately.

“We will investigate any claims thoroughly.”

source: http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/ne ... e/?ref=arc

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

Didn't know there were that many people in Rosendale?

it would be interesting to see what proportion of these are racially motivated ? If i remember correctly this is an area of the country that has seen a disproportionately high number of murders of taxi/PH drivers over the last 25 years

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