Bloodknock wrote:
A screen isn't practical in a saloon and unless it was hermetically sealed it would be of no more use than a driver wearing a mask, gloves and glasses.
A partition in a TX isn't hermetically sealed either, and while it's maybe safer than a plastic partition in a saloon, unless you block off the cash hole and ban cash transactions then there's always an element of risk, and NO ONE knows precisely what that risk is.
I mean, for example, should cash transactions be banned to minimise the risk? Or maybe ban card transactions too unless it's a remote card reader in behind a purpose-built screen rather than the driver handing back an iZettle reader to the customer?
Or ban saloons completely, as some on here suggesting?
Who knows, but society isn't hermetically sealed either, but it's all a question of trading off the risks and benefits - for example, allowing people out to shop for food, but not to shop for less essential stuff like a new mobile phone or pair of jeans.
And, as regards the trade, in some areas obviously very few cabs with proper partitions, in fact probably none at all in some more rural locations. Or, for example, reason Dundee allows older HC plates to run saloons (as compared to WAVs for new plates) is because some people with mobility problems can only access saloons, so obviously banning saloons would be problematic for them, particularly with the trade doing a lot of essential hospital work just now.
And, more generally, there's well qualified people who suggest that the whole lockdown thing is a waste of time, and that infections peaked *before* lockdown, so it's more herd immunity that's bringing down infection rates and deaths rather than the lockdown itself.
By the same token, maybe it won't make a jot of difference whether the trade just carries on as normal, and whether masks, screens, cleaning etc are all a waste of time, or mabye gloves, masks and screens do significantly lower the risk.
Personally I think the whole thing has been overdone. On the other hand, instincively I suspect that the more precautions drivers take, the lower the risk. But whether that lowers the risk from 20% to 1%, say, or from 5% to 4.5%, say, I don't know, and nobody knows, or we'd all have been issued with specific instructions by now.
But as far as I'm aware, I could go out and sit on the ranks tonight and just do precisely what I normally do, and no one in authority would bat an eyelid.
But suspect I'd get zero work, so I won't be bothering for a few weeks yet anyway, so will wait to see what the powers-that-be have come up with by then
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