TAXED & TAXIS
JUST TWO weeks ago, I wrote on the matter of the provisions in the new Road Traffic Act attaching liability to the owners of taxis appurtenant to traffic violations committed by the drivers they employ to operate their vehicles. Well, is like duppy decide to haunt me; well, not me directly, but a friend of mine.
Imagine my sistren in her criss criss bimmer coming from work when from out of nowhere a taxi man drive straight into her car, head-on. The crissas save her life, but it is now a pile of mangled metal, with repair costs estimated at over threemillion dollars. As for the taxi, the reality is that the insurance coverage under which it was operating is hardly enough to cover a third of her repair costs, leaving her to foot the bill for the remainder if she wants to get her car back any time soon.
Her immediate options are simple: pay the difference or defer to her insurance, lose her noclaim bonus and pay through her teeth the next time her insurance comes up for renewal. In the meantime, the taxi driver and the owner are basically free to continue wreaking havoc on the wider motoring public. What poppycock.
Law-abiding motorists need to be protected from this taxi-my-litis. How can we be paying our taxes, ensuring that we are compliant with all the requirements of the law, and taking adequate insurance precautions to not only cover ourselves, but also possible liabilities to others, and yet we cannot be adequately protected against predatory drivers who operate taxis in a manner most afoul of the road code. We need protection, and for that matter, so do the passengers who utilise their services.
HIGH-RISK ENTITIES
The statistics can attest to the propensity for taxi drivers to breach the safe-driving requirements of the road code and to being the causative players in traffic accidents. Notwithstanding their oft limited driving skills, the very nature of the taxi business, based on hustling to obtain passengers, belies the recklessness with which these drivers go about their business. They should be collectively categorised as high-risk drivers and vehicles.
To this end, taxi owners should first be required to have adequate insurance coverage for each passenger the vehicle is registered to convey and then some, as the vehicles are invariably overloaded. Second, they should be required to have adequate third-party coverage for liabilities incurred when they redesign the shape and functionality of other people’s vehicles, especially high-end vehicles like mi sistren bimmer.
LEGAL ACTION
As for my sistren, she has little choice but to sue the owner of the taxi. No doubt it will be a protracted affair, with spirited arguments about inability to pay. Well, from my perspective, and I know many of you out there who have been similarly pained will agree, if people can’t live up to dem obligations, dem must wear short pants. When dem did ah rake in nuff breads from the dutty driving, everything did criss. If dem have fi sell di house and di rest ah di taxi dem, ah so it go, but law-abiding, tax-compliant people must not be left to suffer the indignity of underwriting the shenanigans of these predators.
I am well aware that taxi owners and drivers account for nuff votes, and that our politicos are invariably loath to implement any further prescriptions upon this sector, but trust me, yesterday it was my sistren, tomorrow it may be your spouse or your children. Let’s get serious about this. Taxes already hard fi pay, so keep the taxis at bay.