Those of you outside London probably won't know, but London
operates two separate taxi services. The familiar Black Cabs are easily
spotted and can be hailed in the street. However, due to their high
prices, the fact that you can't really phone one (you can, but they
never come) and that they're difficult to find late at night, a
parallel system of "minicabs" has grown up. These are just ordinary
cars and you negotiate the fare with the driver before the journey
starts. Inititally they were completely unregulated, with attendant
problems, but they're now regulated by Transport for London.
TFL are running a
campaign claiming that unlicensed minicab drivers commit ten rapes
a month. I'm not going to challenge this statistic, but if true I
don't see why this problem can't be tackled by some a very easy
strategy.
Illegal minicabs are easily found. Stand outside a pub or club
late on a Friday or Saturday evening and you'll be approached by loads
of unlicensed cab drivers. If the police were to do this and arrest
the illegal drivers for being unlicensed, they can take a swab of
their DNA (we won't go into the privacy implications of this, as it's
already the way things work). The swabs can then be run against the
police DNA database to see if there are any matches for any of these
"ten rapes a month" TFL are claiming.
So why aren't they doing this?
