Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 16, 2003


TAXIS TRAVEL AT WARPED SPEED


TO LIVEN up a dull dinner party, ask people to share their horror taxi stories and very quickly tales will unfold of lost cabs and running out of petrol; of bigoted cabbies who stink and pick their noses; and of women saying cabbies often make them feel uncomfortable by reaching across their legs for the glovebox. "Ah, yes, Sydney," people once said. Now it is, "Yeah, Adelaide." Twice in the past month, interstate visitors have complained to me about our taxi drivers. In the first incident, Queenslander Simon M caught a cab from his Waymouth St hotel to dinner at a restaurant in Hutt St, a distance of 1.3km as the crow flies. Unfortunately, cabs are not crows and poor Simon had to endure a hellride with a driver who could not find his way there without Simon's help, the blind leading the lost. The driver said he needed to check the street directory, fair enough, but when he pulled out a magnifying glass, explaining that his eyesight was ``not so good at night'', I would have leapt out there and then. But simple Simon went along for the ride and the driver even asked him to call out each street sign on the way there because he could not see them. At the end of the trip, the cabbie had been unable to work the Cabcharge machine. This was not his real job, he explained, he was just filling in. His day job was as a truck driver, surprise, surprise. The second interstate guest was Meg S who, in a cab from the airport to the city, had asked if the blaring radio could be turned down while she made a mobile phone call. Enraged, the cabbie had sped like a maniac in and out of the traffic, which left Meg terrified and even angrier than him. Yet she never complained. As Australians, we are disinclined to dob, so I now dread catching a cab from the airport, knowing a particular idiot is possibly behind the wheel. My horror story is about a cabbie who recently took me to the airport. With the winter sun warming his side, I sensed his attention was not fully on the road when the car drifted across the lane toward oncoming traffic. "Driver!" I yelled from the back seat. His head snapped up, suddenly awake and angrily denying he had been asleep. He fell asleep again at the next traffic lights. He was not fit to deliver pizzas much less people. The taxi accreditation system sets standards for the ``fitness and propriety'' of drivers _ obviously not physical fitness to judge by some of the leadbellies behind the wheel _ as well as such rules as wearing a uniform and minimum waiting times. Keen to know what these standards might be, I did an internet search for the South Australian Taxi Association, only to be told ``You are not authorised to view this page'' and that I needed a password. Why? What dark secrets does the taxi industry possess that the rest of us are denied? Even the ASIO website allows me entry. I have a personal cabbie when I can get him, a friendly chap by the name of Roger who is clean, takes pride in his driving and is immensely knowledgeable about Adelaide. Simon and Meg now have his number.