Taxi Driver Online

the dtwa now have their own website up and running ,they cetrtainly aren,t sitting around doing nothing like the dta have been doing for years,
(the dta had a meeting last month with the hack owners and the tgwu to try and persuade the council to let hacks change hands for money)and apart from the court case with 203020 that seems to be all they have done, if you click the join button you will see not all wavs are welcome
http://www.dwta.info/

I saw an article in the papers recently saying that the association had had to provide training for drivers because the council hadn't - what a joke!

What happened to the guy with the foreign name who started it?

Oh, I see the press release said he resigned for personal reasons.

I liked the link to the Driving Standards Agency Official online theory test for Car Drivers

I did the test in 10 mins & got 32/35

http://www.theory-tests.co.uk/starttest ... 8&orgid=12

I'm glad they were no questions asking when you should use your indicators 'cause I havn't used mine since I started taxi-driving

Which is against the law if I not wrong !!

But at least the T&G are sharing the same single cause as the NTA, the saviour of taxi quotas. That's all they give a dam about.

As my good friend from Taxi Talk recently stated.

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IDFIMH

I wonder why the Dundee Taxi Cab Company and the hack association aren't eligible to joing the new association

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Don't know what your feeling are about transporting wheelchairs in these cobbled together pieces of [edited by admin] but the Health & Safety at Work Act supersedes the Disability Discrimination Act, regardless of amendments.

Just for the uninitiated I was kicked out of a Computer Cabs Edinburgh for asking the company to take responsibility in the event of an accident. Needless to say they refused but kicked me out of the company for pointing out the company’s responsibility to the driver and the passenger.

So much for equal rights?


Before anyone tries to take the moral high ground ask yourself this, would anyone on the council or their staff, transport wheelchair passengers without properly equipped vehicles and insurance?


I doubt it?

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All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

All London Taxis have had to be Wheelchair accessable since 1988.

At the time, a bit like the Euro 3 thing, many owners of older Taxis had to undergo £2000 conversions.

All to enable them to transport 2 wheelchairs a year if your lucky.

A bit like my local grocery store, he had to install a ramp under the terms of last years access act, he has'nt had a wheelchair customer in ten years of trading, if he did he would have gone out and helped them in.

Eh!

What's that got to do with properly equiped vehicles, trainned operators and insurance?

Surly its the Council's responsibility to make sure all of the above is in place before making it a requirment of the trade.

If you put you back out you are in deep [edited by admin] and if the customer gets injured for whatever reason they could end up suing you.

I don't see any council employees being put in this position.


Murphy's Law and all that, what can happen will happen.

Just for the record, I had a wheelchair customer who pulled on the centre partition and broke the perspex. A nice little £70 bill for yours truly. And he thought he was doing me a favour by trying to help me get him in.


No one would take responsibility, not the company or the council, Christ they didn't even log it as an accident. In other words "No Record, No Problem", it just never happened.




I voiced my view and got put out of a job, not because I did anything other than point out the Health and Safety issues. I even checked with an insurance company as to my position in the event of an accident. I was informed if I did not carried out the correct risk assessment and put myself at risk it was my problem.

Let me tell you, after what I have learned from the H&S up here in Scotland no one should be doing wheelchair work with these vehicles. Their view was the wheelchair customer should be accompanied by an assistant to get him/her in and out the taxi, failing that they should have to get themselves in. The Taxi drivers job is to supply the equipment and strap them in, nothing else.

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All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, "Animal Farm"

I agree and from day one I have always said that if a job looks iffy, then I don't do it.

That goes from blanking the scum to trying to lift a ten ton tubby. Might not be PC, but so be it.

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IDFIMH

The whole wheelchair issue is a mess - as I keep on saying, if the DfT can't even get the DDA sorted out in ten years then leaving hundreds of LAs to do their own thing is a recipe for disaster - the Dundee WT Association having to provide training being a case in point.

A big problem with the whole issue is that people don't want to say much lest it's deemed insensitive.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Am I right in thinking that a shop selling mountinering gear, located half way up Mt Snowdon would not get a licence unless it was fitted with wheelchair ramps?

The world has gone mad.

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There's no excuse for animal abuse. If you ain't vegan you are an animal abuser.

I think they must make 'reasonable adjustments', to use the terminology.

Of course, what this means is open to question.

A corner shop near me, for example, is difficult for an able bodied person to get through, there's so much stuff in it, and the aisles are so narrow. A wheelchair would never get round it at all

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk