Are some London cabbies becoming too arrogant, asks Jenny Jones

Not relevant to the London cabbie debate, but where I live there are two bus companies plying their trade and there's a noticeable difference in how their drivers treat me when I'm cycling.
The drivers of one bus company will sit in behind me if they know they're going to be stopping 200 yards up the road, they actually give way at roundabouts and even pull out wide to pass me.
Drivers of the other bus company regularly charge past at close quarters before stopping at the next stop, pull out in front of me etc. basically show scant disregard for my well being as a road user.
I can only put this down to the training (or lack of) that the drivers get from within their companies, needless to say if I'm ever catching a bus I'll wait extra time at the stop to give my trade to the nice to cyclists bus company.

They remind me of the print industry before Eddie Shah.

My experience of black cab drivers when I used to work in the city was that they would start off friendly, and the conversation would 90% of the time descend into hate for cyclists/foreigners/anyone non white. I don't say that lightly either. You could almost guarantee it. Majority of them are overweight frustrated wankers. I work with a couple of ex cabbies now and the amount of times I've got into arguments with them because of racist/xenophobic comments, why don't cyclists pay road tax blah blah blah, is unreal.

"some"?
"becoming"?

I think the main question of this article is unfairly biased to begin with. Replace the word cabbie with cyclist, white people, black people or whatever and you'll probably get a slew of confirmation bias. I actually find cab drivers pretty decent and I don't think cyclist make their job easy. We are talking about an autonomous group of people and so there will be those that behave badly and those that act with respect (that goes for cyclists, cabbies, car drivers, lorry drivers) and so you should not throw the baby out with the bath water.

bikebot wrote:

We don't need to group the bad cab drivers together, they've already done it. It's called the LTDA.

LTDA represent less than 6000 of the far too many, mostly empty 24,000 cabbies currently licenced.

Ciaranthecab wrote:

An awful lot of piousness and sactimony from a lot of people on this forum. Can you look yourselves in the eye and say that you always adhere to the rules of the road and that you never jeopardise yourselves, pedestrians, other road users?

Stand on any junction in London and watch endless black cabs jump red lights. You can even go and watch that video of the cyclist who collided with the side of the bus, and what most didnt notice is that a black cab jumped the lights.

And the sooner that black cabs are forced to convert their vehicles away from diesel and stop polluting the environment with PM2.5, the better.

Jenny Jones is normally bang on about cycling and safety in London - and has done more for cyclists in London than just about any other elected London politician. (OK, she has chaired and spoken at our conferences and has supported Road Danger Reduction for years).

But I have to disagree about the effects of Operation Safeway.

I agree that during and immediately after enforcement exercises drivers will often behave better in the area of enforcement. But I'm not happy about where and how the policing is done and its overall effects. I wrote about this when OS started http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/11/29/is-there-a-police-blitz-on-unsafe-driving-... and I haven't seen anything since to change my mind about its failures.

I used to use them a lot, but would rather walk or get a tube now. I have probably used one all year.

Total vitriol from the majority of posters against cab drivers although, thankfully, some intelligent posts.

An awful lot of piousness and sactimony from a lot of people on this forum. Can you look yourselves in the eye and say that you always adhere to the rules of the road and that you never jeopardise yourselves, pedestrians, other road users?

There are a lot of cab drivers who behave like they own the road....there's a lot of cyclists who do as well. As a cab driver, I always try to drive considerately and safely and I always will. Hopefully, cyclists will do the same.

Yeh, but they are pretty much the ADB of the taxi world, so it's to be expected.

I think one of the main issues is that the "training" revolves almost entirely around memorising common driving routes in London, an entirely pointless exercise given the maturity of sat nav technology, with live traffic updates and re-routing.

If those wasted years were spent on practical training about how to safely operate a vehicle on central London's crowded roads without harming other road users, we probably wouldn't be reading this blog post.

Replace black cab with cyclist on pretty much all the comments above, and you get a situation we all get really wound up about, grouping all as a homogenous blob.

I'm sure there are bad cab drivers, as there are bad cyclists, but really are the percentage of taxi drivers that are bad that much that we feel the need to tar the whole lot. This is pretty much the same as saying all cyclists jump red lights.

I think one thing that would go a long way to stop issues is to require all cabs to be licenced, even uber. It's then a level playing field and the government can regulate all cabs better. Then reform the regulation, as it's pants.

Operation Safeway was bullcrap

Black cab drivers are their own worst enemy. How can they expect sympathy from the public when they behave like a gang of thugs given any opportunity to do so?
I understand their frustration at minicabs, who in my honest opinion should be massively culled to maybe only a thousand (from 52,000) with Addison Lee being eliminated entirely, but if they weren't so expensive then maybe more people would use them instead. There are far too many empty taxis and minicabs on the streets and they are the ones causing the congestion.

Don't get me started.....
http://youtu.be/_Tt9dzCMe1o

I've not had much time for black cabs since one driver doored a good friend of mine, and drove off leaving her on the road with a cut up face. She was on her way to a choir rehearsal and her injuries including a severed nerve in her cheek which meant should could never sing again. The complaint service is really more about passengers and defending the drivers.

The sooner London (and the rest of the UK) is served by a fleet of autonomous Uber cars the better in my opinion. Black cabs have had their time.

Boy am I glad I don't have to run the gauntlet with these murderous wankers!

My problem is bus drivers they have very similar attitudes, not all but a significant number. If infringement meant loosing your licence then I'm sure attitudes would change, and road safety would improve for everyone.

A driving licence should be a privilege NOT a right. Those who are working drivers, and expose other to more risk (simply because they are driving for longer periods of time than "ordinary drivers") should be required to maintain the highest standards.

A few weeks riding a bike through rush hour because their licence has been revoked would give them a new perspective of just how dangerous any motor vehicle is to other, perfectly entitled, users of public rights of way generally known as roads.

Black cabs, where to begin? Basically they are the loonies of the taxi world, they’re almost a sort of Isis of London's cabs.

Its not just their driving its their views and their politics – if you are not with them then nothing is too bad for you.

https://youtu.be/DY4eS0j-TXY

The number of Black taxis is artificially restricted to circa 28 thousand and those who commit to it earn in the region of £60k a year. No matter how well you know the Knowledge you will not pass until a licence is available.
As a kid in East London I looked up to cabbies but they should change the rules. There should be a standardised test and if you pass the grade you should get the badge. Taking it away from the Police in the 90's was a start that fizzled out.
Allow the market to decide how many licenced cabbies work not restrict it to 28,000.