Duty of Care

Tonight I picked up a guy from outside a local pub. It was clear to me he was well tanked as he was slurring his words and talking in unrelated bursts. Anyway he requests the bottle shop drive thru and when we get there the attendant noticing his condition tells him sorry but I can't serve you alcohol. We leave there and I ask "Where to?" assuming he will head home but no he tells me to find him the nearest bottle shop as he still wants his block of cans.

Finally after driving around for a fair while and finding all 3 bottleshops in the area closed I took the guy home. But it raises the question. The bottleshop attendant has a duty of care under the law requiring him to refuse service to someone visibly under the influence, which he did. But where does that leave me? and what are my obligations under the law or the taxi act for that matter?

Do I blindly drive him wherever he wants to go or am I meant to tell him the best place for you is home you've had a skin full? Simply put my job is to drive people from point A to point B but we all know the law is anything but simple

New twist on Drink driving

A gold coast man caught for DUI upon leaving the police station, hailed a cab to go to a bottle shop and then returned to his vehicle and drove away.

Police were waiting for him however and to add to everything else he now blew a higher blood alcohol reading.

The news article is here

Announcing WordPress Blog Mirror

Well it took a while but I have finally copied all the posts from this blog over to the mirror I created on WordPress. The annoying thing is I have more readers on that blog after only 2 weeks than I have here on Blogger and I haven't done anything to promote it. That's the power of WordPress I guess.

Anyway should you want to check it out the uri is Bytes from the Back Seat

Your only a cabbie

4 words that don't look like much on a page or a computer screen for that matter but damn if they don't make my blood boil when they are said in a derogatory and/or dismissive manner as they were Friday morning.

Yes I am a Cabbie should I be ashamed of the fact? Should I apologise for it? Sure I might not get to wear the nice suit or have lunch in the fancy restaurant and sure I don't have the ditsy but definitely good looking personal assistant and I'll never have the six figure income. But damn him I'm 'PROUD' of being a Cabbie. I'm 'GOOD' at what I do and hey he 'NEEDED ME'

So be dismissive Mr Arrogant and up yourself but remember this. When you needed to get somewhere I turned up and took you there and I did so efficiently, professionally, courteously and without treating you in the manner you treated me.

Signed

Only a Cabbie

I never got to say thankyou

--- This was originally posted as a comment on my blog here ---

A few years ago I was leaving the airport doing 80kays on the access road and suddenly the traffic just stopped, literally. I managed to stop under full emergency braking with maybe half an inch between me and the car in front but after that realisation I glanced at the rear view mirror and I could tell the cab that was bearing down on me was never going to stop. Not in time.

The next few moments were spent glancing at the car in front praying he would move up even the tiniest bit so I could also move up and maybe just maybe it would be enough and looking back at the mirror and the cab that was about to run straight thru me. Of course this all took a fraction of a second and then he came flying past me on the left in the breakdown lane.

He stopped under full emergency braking exactly in line with the front of my car. Had he not had the presence of mind to dive left at the last second I would have been sucking my Christmas dinner thru a straw in intensive care. If I lived at all. It was Christmas eve.

My greatest regret is I never got his number and as a result never got the chance to meet him, shake his hand and thank him for being on the ball when it mattered the most.

Lost property and secret recordings

I picked up 3 young women tonight in their mid twenty's they wanted to go from Trigg to Cottesloe. Anyway after about 10 minutes 1 of them asks me for my cab number and promptly sms's it off to a friend. I thought that was a bit strange but she says she has a habit of leaving stuff in cabs and wanted to make sure she knew the cab she had been in so getting her stuff back would be easier. I suggested just checking the cab when she got out would be the smart option but it seems she is a serial loser of stuff in cabs. The tally was 8 mobile phones, 3 handbags, numerous sets of keys and sunglasses.

Anyway towards the end of the fare she says "Shit!, I've been video recording the whole cab ride since we left home. Everything we've said has been recorded and I've just sent it off to 'Beck" Now I'm not sure how to feel about this. I mean had she not sent it too her friend I would have asked her to delete it as I wasn't aware I was being recorded and didn't feel too comfortable about it.
Am I overreacting?? Conversations happen in taxis that would be inappropriate in another context but from what I can remember nothing was said that I should worry about.

What do yo think?? If your a cabbie how do you think you would feel being taped without your permission? I'd never even thought about it but with mobiles today it's certainly possible.

A daughter lost.

My thoughts go out today to FreddyBeach Cabbie.

Today is the 8th anniversary of the death of his daughter in an alcohol related traffic accident. Head on over to his blog site and take a look at the video he put together (I'm on dial-up it's not that big) She was very young and very beautiful

They say it gets easier with time but I hazard a guess there will be 1 less cabby on the roads tonight. All the best mate.

-: I drove like an idiot after dropping my last fare off this morning at the airport, trying to make up time between there and changeover with a fuel stop on the way,even thou at the time I knew it was stupid. Then when I got online and read the post by FreddyBeach Cabbie and watched the movie, I felt twice as stupid.

What have you done this past week in your car that was stupid, dangerous or foolish?? Maybe this is a good time to reflect on those things and make an effort to do less stupid, dangerous or foolish things behind the wheel.

Blog problems

I have noticed some problems with my blog over the last few weeks. Firstly the recent comments widget hasn't updated when someone has left a comment. I understand it wont happen instantly as blogger has to reindex the comment feed but 1 from the 23/12/06 has only just appeared there today!

The other thing is my archives. If you look on the sidebar it shows the 3 (4 when I post this) posts I have made this year. The problem is even thou the post date is correct it still shows the archive as being 2006 and the month December! You would think with Blogger out of beta things like this would be fixed. So anyway being the lazy person I am I'm going to leave it another week and hope they sort it on their side and if its still showing incorrectly then I will email support and see what happens.

Pedicabs

I have been seeing these 'Bail' style Pedicabs around Northbridge lately and never really gave them much thought I mean there not about to take our $25-$100 job market off us are they? It's more of a novelty factor something you would do for a bit of fun that is until last night.

Last night it was dead, so dead I did $57.50 in 4 hrs and had to take 5 jobs to make it!! Thankfully it did pick up and the night finished off much better but this story is about Pedicabs and last night they moved in on 'my' turf.

I drove past the Rydges hotel in hay st and saw not 1 but 4 Pedicabs. Have they got a license I wondered? Have they been given permission to park right outside 1 of the more popular city hotels ?? What really annoyed me is they were parked right outside the hotel and the taxi rank is 150 meters down the road from there. Last night I wanted every and any job I could get, even the little $7 one mattered.

So I've decided I need to give my dispatch a call in the morning and ask them if they have any knowledge of these Pedicab vultures. I don't want to shut them down but I would prefer it if they stayed out of the city and just worked Northbridge that's the place for something like this in amongst the bars and clubs and kebab joints.

Its funny how my attitude has changed towards them now it's January and work is scarce. I'll post up the response I get from dispatch tomorrow if I get the chance.

Persistance pays off

I realised after talking with the service station guy this morning that the title of this post "Persistence pays off!!" could have been the title of this blog, it certainly is my motto I just didn't realise it until this morning.

Taxi drivers are a funny lot. 4 nights a week they will work from 6pm (usually) to midnight or 1am then head for home and in doing so they forego the remaining 5 or 6 hours of their shift. They justify it by saying "it's not worth my time" or "it's too quiet/theres no work" when in reality there is work out there you just have to know where to find it and given that I don't work Fri/Sat nights I have to stay out and make the most of those early morning hours.

I've gotten to the stage where I LOVE the quiet times and I realise that may sound a bit strange to you but I really mean it. I feel a much greater sense of achievement and accomplishment right now after finishing my shift even thou I'm $80 down on my take for New Years Eve. The reason is because unlike NYE the money wasn't thrown at me I had to search it out, It would have been easy to finish the night with $100 less than I ended up taking but I wanted to work, I searched out the work and I found it and because of that I got the reward.

So my motto for 2007 is going to be "Persistence pays off!!"

Below Par

Crap!! That is my assessment of this New Years Eve. It rates second in the list of crap New Years only missing out to the New Years of 1999/2000 when everyone thought the world was going to end because of the y2k bug and no one could agree if it really was the new millennium or if that started with 2001.

My best night in 2006 came in November before we had a fare increase and it was a weeknight I don't work Fri/Sat night and haven't for over 12 months. Well tonight after the fare increase which gave us 6cents a kilometer, 20cents each flagfall and 50cents on our phone booking fee and including the New Years Eve surcharge of $4.50 on each fare I only bettered my previous best by $6

I had time to go home at midnight for a toilet break and a coffee a luxury you just never get on a busy New Years Eve. If I had to estimate it I would say I should have made at least $150 more than I did and thats not ego talking or greed thats an honest estimate based on a good night including the extra $4.50 surcharge.

Part of it was the increased public transport that was put on something I support totally. It's about time people both customers and officialdom realise taxis can't cope with the huge peak demand that occurs at times like this and we can't be expected to.

The other problem was the media beating up the fact that taxis will be swamped and getting 1 will be nigh on impossible so make sure you have other arrangements. The trouble is they did. The trains left Perth packed while the taxis coasted around busy but far from flat out.

My take for the night was good don't get me wrong and any other night I would be more than happy with it. It's just that this was New Years Eve and I guess there just wasn't the sizzle that you normally expect. It lacked that total consuming edge to it that you associate with a good New Years Eve.

Tonight we have Perth Cup and 20/20 cricket at the WACA so it will be another busy night hopefully it will make up for last night. 1 thing I know, the extra transport isn't running.