StuartW wrote:
Sussex wrote:
Quote:
Hardly surprising that clinicians don't want the onus of deciding who's fit and proper - legally that's the ultimate responsibility of local authorities, rightly or wrongly:
But are they being asked that?
Our medical forms are merely tick box exercise. The doctor just ticks or puts in the details of what he has observed during the examination.
It's still down to the council to determine if the driver is fit and proper, based on what the medical form states.
Depends on each local authority's procedures (obviously).
But my point about the St Helens thread that I linked to was that there the forms seemed to be putting the onus on the clinicians to decide.
As I said, suspect the clinicians would prefer the onus to be on the LAs, and vice versa from the LAs' perspective.
Of course, legally the onus is on the LAs, but that won't necessarily stop the LAs trying to pass the buck to the GPs, as the St Helens case seemed to demonstrate.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34516&p=391709Jimbo clearly doesn't like the idea of local authority officials and councillors having the final say, but my point to him was that that's the legal position, rightly or wrongly.
The legal position? Is there a legal position?
If the council saw from my “medical “ that I suffered from galloping knob rot, or atrial fibrillation, or cataracts, or athletes foot, or hay fever, who amongst them is fit to judge my fitness to drive a taxi?
Surely they would then be at risk of a legal challenge.
When I first started out in this trade over 35 years ago, and back then, all you needed was two references from people who knew you. The taxi inspector back then was an ex cop, and he would have a quiet word with an ex colleague to see if you had any previous. A couple of days later, for £10.00 (!) you got a one year badge, and off you went to a glorious career. No CRB/ DBS no medical. No sat navs or mobile phones either, so you needed to know what you were doing.
The guy who introduced the CRB, after Soham, believes it is just used as a box ticking exercise, because it just hasn’t worked, has it.
A medical is a box ticking exercise also, so that should a driver die at the wheel, the council can claim they did all they could to avoid such a thing, and are therefore un-sue-able. So they passed the buck to the medics, and now the medics, afraid of being sued themselves, are passing the buck back to the councils.
Sooner or later, a driver will be refused a badge for wearing glasses.
I do find it fascinating how some on here actually defend councils for insisting on medicals and DBS checks when they are as much use as a chocolate fire guard.
I will have retired, thankfully before the schiesen hits the fan.