The driver is the most dangerous part of the taxi
I partly grew up in a cab. My grandfather was a taxi driver and I do not have numbers on how many trips I have had in his car. The license number was A-317. The first car I remember was a burgundy Opel Kapitän, but afterwards he had a dark blue Ford Consul and a red Vauxhall Victor 101 Super.
The picture for this Wednesday pihlsen is from Opel, where we grandchildren usually stand or sit in the front seat while the adults sit in the back seat and smoke. The seat belt was not yet, but the traffic was modest as the car lock was still valid.
Grandpa always wore a uniform when he drove a cab. A gray uniform, white shirt, dark tie and driver’s hat, as all the taxi drivers had. When he had to pick up or drop off new passengers, he used to open the door for them. He lifted the suitcases up into the trunk and took them out again when they arrived. Over the course of a week, there were like a few ounces and two ounces left over, and these he used to collect for my brother and me. We learned early on both to tell our money what they were worth and how they last for them, but which is more difficult today when money is just a digital programming line in online banking.
A lot has happened since my grandfather was a taxi driver. Well, it has become a release in the taxi industry, and anyone can presumably start driving taxis as long as they have something that can look like a car. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration carried out a major inspection at the end of September of the taxis in Oslo and Romerike and found faults in 34 of 133 vehicles. Several people were reported to the police. Many cars were not registered as taxis. Several drivers did not have a license. Licenses were lent illegally. Every fourth car was banned from use, many were not EU-approved. In a similar inspection at Flesland, eight of the fourteen cars lacked necessary permits. Often passengers are refused entry because the trip is too short.
It pops up rogue and dangerous actors everywhere, you can never know who is driving you or whether the car is in technically approved condition. Many drive black. Others use taxis as washing machines of black money. The fact that taxi drivers no longer need to be affiliated with a switchboard with associated controls has led to more unscrupulous actors with little or no knowledge of lovers and rules being sought for easy money. That’s not how we can have it, and we can stop the madness right away. We do not need more proof that it does not work.
I’ve had quite a few shaky cab rides in my life, and sometimes I think it was luck that saved me. Like when a Danish taxi driver crossed HC Andersens Boulevard in Copenhagen at a red light, for ninety kilometers. Pedestrians scampered to all sides and I hinted that I would like to get to the hotel in one piece. Then he turned around and asked me if he or I was driving the car, and luckily I was quick enough to ask if it was he or I who had to pay for the trip. The rest of the journey went for fifteen kilometers, but rather that.
Possibly it was his brother I drove with the last time I was in Copenhagen and was going to the Oslo boat. The Danish boat is called the Oslo boat in Copenhagen. He used handheld GPS which he looked at while driving, but still managed to drive to the wrong exit. When we were on the wrong side of Nordhavn Bassin, I had to point to the Oslo boat and explain that this was where I was going. No problem, he replied, aiming at the boat and giving the ban gas. Luckily, I’m so well known in the King’s by knowing that there was lake between the outcrops, but he did not. I threw myself forward in the car, shook the handbrake and went to everything I was about. We stopped abruptly to meters from the pier. An acquaintance test had been perfectly fine for my liking.
In Milan, I saw a taxi driver who drove on the principle that the shortest distance between two points was the straight line. He had a rust red Fiat Uno, the color did not come from paint, but rust. The traffic in Milan was just like in other Italian cities, chaotic and crowded, so when we came to the roundabout in Foro Buonaparte he gladly took the tram rails on. The difference between the tram rails and the street was that, unlike the street, the tram route was not paved. It was so bumpy that I suffered a concussion and the buildings outside became blurred, and when we finally arrived at the airport, the suitcases had been refurnished several times. I still have a little back pain after the trip, it ended up happening almost thirty years ago.
When I was about to climb Pico Ruivo, the highest mountain in Madeira, I took a taxi from Santana to Achade do Taxeira. Like all other highest peaks, Pico Ruivo is largely shrouded in mist. I never got to see the view, but I have at least been there. The taxi uphill drove slowly, so slowly that I repeatedly wondered if I should offer to go out pushing, as was common in the Lier hills in the late fifties, when the car had small engines and was full of passengers.
However, I came to take a look at the speedometer and discovered that the odometer was at 760 thousand. That explained a lot, so I allowed myself to say that such old Mercedes diesel engines were impressively tenacious. Then he turned to me and shook his head. No no. It had not gone 760 thousand, it had gone around twice already, so it had gone 2 million and 760 thousand. Only the second gear worked, so it was really too steep up the slopes of Achade do Taxeira. I asked if he could pick me up in three or four hours, and then he replied that he could wait in the parking lot, for he needed no more than walks a day. So then it happened, he waited and I climbed up on Pico Ruivo. On the way back it did not go much faster than it had gone up.
Something quite different was when I was going back to pick up the car that was parked at Pico de Arieiro after going Levada da Negra down to Funchal. I had spent just over an hour getting myself fully up and through the many hairpin turns, but this driver took the same ride in twenty minutes, including refueling. He plunged into the hairpin bends on the inside like a fighter pilot in the air force and fired again on the other side as fast as the car could, which was more than fast enough for my liking. Right or left side of the road, played no role. I think there was an unofficial Madeira championship on the stretch and that I sat on with him who holds the record. Rarely have I been so happy to have quick ground under my feet as after that trip. The word customer treatment hardly appears in the Portuguese foreign dictionary.
I still find myself thinking that the taxis were much better in my father’s time, and that there is nothing in the way of the drivers starting with uniforms and uniform hats again, opening the doors to the passage and helping them with the luggage. We need to be safe in taxis because the car and the driver need to be trustworthy. In addition, we can reintroduce professional pride among drivers, as far as I can understand.
Wednesday snaps
We did not get the Olympics in Groruddalen, nor NRK. But prison, that will be the place for it.