Cabbies are given clean bill of health (From This Is Wiltshire)

How about checking their driving skills whilst your at it. Many would fail that test based on my experience of driving round Swindon......

How about their knowledge of swindon most just use sat navs as thet do not know their way around the town.

it wasn't anything to do with safety, it was to check these guys are allowed to work in the UK, make sure they are not fiddiling benefits and to ensure they are paying tax! Another small guy incentive by this goverenement

Did the police check the indicators, as most cabs in the town don't appear to have any that work?

“I own my own cab and people should look after them. Mine gets inspected every six months and it’s regularly checked...."

...to ensure the indicator bulbs have been removed.

The headline could also read:

Over 13% of Swindon Cabs Dangerously Unsafe

But I suppose the Adver wanted to put a positive spin on things.

semitonic wrote:
“I own my own cab and people should look after them. Mine gets inspected every six months and it’s regularly checked...."

...to ensure the indicator bulbs have been removed.

Like it :)

LordAshOfTheBrake wrote:
How about checking their driving skills whilst your at it. Many would fail that test based on my experience of driving round Swindon......

It is odd, years ago you could always rely on taxi drivers to be the best drivers on the road. Always knew where they were going, didn't dawdle along at 10mph under the prevailing speed limit and actually helped keep the roads flowing very nicely.

These days they're amongst the very worst drivers out there. Never seem to know where they're going, prone to the most ridiculous manoeuvres with little or no prior warning and often seem to think that 18mph is an acceptable speed to drive on an open, clear and dry road during the daytime.

I also agree with Hmmmf - how can the headline read 'a clean bill of health' when 7 of the 53 taxis were immediately taken off the road and a driver is being investigated by DWP / Immigration?

Interesting that one driver in the article mentioned it was black cabs being pulled over, it's rarely that type that are the problem.

Tim,

I can't remember a time when taxi drivers were the best on the road.

You must be going back a long time. Was there a man walking in front waving a flag?

Tim Newroman wrote:

LordAshOfTheBrake wrote:
How about checking their driving skills whilst your at it. Many would fail that test based on my experience of driving round Swindon......

It is odd, years ago you could always rely on taxi drivers to be the best drivers on the road. Always knew where they were going, didn't dawdle along at 10mph under the prevailing speed limit and actually helped keep the roads flowing very nicely.

These days they're amongst the very worst drivers out there. Never seem to know where they're going, prone to the most ridiculous manoeuvres with little or no prior warning and often seem to think that 18mph is an acceptable speed to drive on an open, clear and dry road during the daytime.

I also agree with Hmmmf - how can the headline read 'a clean bill of health' when 7 of the 53 taxis were immediately taken off the road and a driver is being investigated by DWP / Immigration?

Interesting that one driver in the article mentioned it was black cabs being pulled over, it's rarely that type that are the problem.

That was in the day before our overseas friends came over here and started taxing in their beaten up Nissan Sunnys

Firstly should be checked how many hours a day they're working :-)
Most of them 16hrs a day 7 days a week.
Smelly stuff.

and how many other cabs were warned to avoid the area concerned, there was probably a higher proportion of defective vehicles missed than caught. what it needs is for the authorities to have a policy of pulling one defective cab a night or day until they get the message that their law breaking is useless, but until the authorities operate in different unmarked vehicles to catch the culprits the problems will persist

Tim Newroman wrote:

LordAshOfTheBrake wrote:
How about checking their driving skills whilst your at it. Many would fail that test based on my experience of driving round Swindon......

It is odd, years ago you could always rely on taxi drivers to be the best drivers on the road. Always knew where they were going, didn't dawdle along at 10mph under the prevailing speed limit and actually helped keep the roads flowing very nicely.

These days they're amongst the very worst drivers out there. Never seem to know where they're going, prone to the most ridiculous manoeuvres with little or no prior warning and often seem to think that 18mph is an acceptable speed to drive on an open, clear and dry road during the daytime.

I also agree with Hmmmf - how can the headline read 'a clean bill of health' when 7 of the 53 taxis were immediately taken off the road and a driver is being investigated by DWP / Immigration?

Interesting that one driver in the article mentioned it was black cabs being pulled over, it's rarely that type that are the problem.

Between you and bob fm, I really don't think there is anything you guys don't think you are experts on. You two should join a club, or maybe a political party, one failed ukip candidate and one failed Tory lol, what a coalition

I have to agree with Lord Ash and Tim R, I have found taxi drivers in Swindon along with bus drivers to be the worst around. I guess because they consider themselves "experts" they dont think they need to try too hard.. Local Boy, I am guessing from your name you have lived here all your life, so may not have anything other than this town to go by or compare against. I have lived in more than a few towns and cities, and it still amazes me how bad the driving is in this town, I have never known so many people not to bother to indicate at roundabouts (of which there are many here) or junctions or even go through red lights which they do every day at the junction I live on. Maybe we need reminding that there are still an average of 9 road deaths every single day in this country which is about a jumbo jet full every 8 weeks or so to put it in perpsective and the vast majority are driver error.

house on the hill wrote:
I have to agree with Lord Ash and Tim R, I have found taxi drivers in Swindon along with bus drivers to be the worst around. I guess because they consider themselves "experts" they dont think they need to try too hard.. Local Boy, I am guessing from your name you have lived here all your life, so may not have anything other than this town to go by or compare against. I have lived in more than a few towns and cities, and it still amazes me how bad the driving is in this town, I have never known so many people not to bother to indicate at roundabouts (of which there are many here) or junctions or even go through red lights which they do every day at the junction I live on. Maybe we need reminding that there are still an average of 9 road deaths every single day in this country which is about a jumbo jet full every 8 weeks or so to put it in perpsective and the vast majority are driver error.

Ive been lucky enough to have done a bit of treveling in my short 26 years and I can assure you the driving in Swindon is much much better than most. Have you ever been to India, Bali, even the Caribbean. Now that some scary driving