Students don’t fare dodge

There have been allegations recently of fare dodging in taxis in the Leamington Spa area, with an increasing number of cab drivers installing cameras to help catch the offenders.

The problem for cabbies is predominantly at night, when drunken customers run off rather than pay their fare. Mark Bradshaw, owner of Dial-a-Cab in Rugby installed cameras in his cabs in January. They have dramatically helped to track down fare-dodging offenders. One customer ran out on a twenty-pound fare, only to find his face on posters and eventually turned himself in at the police station.

However, most cabbies working with Warwick University students in the Leamington area seem to think the problem is a non-issue. At the Warwick University taxi rank, Jasvir Grewal said that fare dodging was “part of the game”, and added it was “not a problem with students”. Most of the drivers had only experienced fare dodging a limited number of times; Mukesh Sharma has only suffered from it twice in the six years he has been a cab driver.

Only one taxi in the rank had a camera, whose driver, Avtar Singh, said that fare-dodging was a “general problem” and that “students occasionally do it after a few drinks on a Saturday night”, but thought that students were generally well-behaved.

Diamond Taxis, one of the cab companies in Leamington, have no cameras in their cabs, and “taxis don’t have problems with students, students have problems with taxis.”

In fact, many of the cab companies were keen to express their happiness with students. Bobby David, manager of Kabline, said, “usually students are money conscious. They go out in groups to only pay a couple of pounds each.” While, Rob Harris of AA Taxis, said that there was “not one bit of trouble in the past seven or eight years with either taxis or minibuses.”