PSA - Addison Lee Minicab Chairman on Radio 4

[gaz]

Anyone else notice he's been quoted before saying he's got a key/card/signed up for the Boris Bike scheme, but even in this interview he's never said he's actually been on one?

Yes, i noticed that as well..

 

[musa]

Those Boris bikes. no training no helmets no hi viz required I've seen people at night ride them like lunatics

 

[mcshroom]

Yet not a single KSI on a Boris bike. Makes you wonder where the danger really lies

 

[Red Light]

There is NO EVIDENCE that inexperienced cyclists form a large part of the statistics, an experienced courier was killed this year, other tragedies included cyclists who'd covered long distances and were used to cycling in London. Griffin is wrong. What he's saying is dangerous because it's very close to saying cyclists are always at fault. For their own deaths.

Actually the safety record of Boris Bikers is far better than that for cyclists generally in London.

 

[Red Light]

I think he got it right in the beginning when he talked about drivers being on their iPods and phones (anyone recognise an Addison Lee driver there?) but he then changed it to cyclists.

 

[ufkacbln]

The stuff about iPods was just a retreat into general clichéed prejudice against cyclists and did nothing to do to address the insulting and inflammatory comments he made earlier about cyclists. This just widens out his attempt to tar even more cyclists as inexperienced, non-tax paying, deaf, wobbling grannies who are responsible for being invisible when drivers knock them off or bully them.

The lack of reports about his drivers taking Addison Leeberties in the bus lanes is illuminating. They clearly already know what a lying untrustworthy weasel he is.

Anyone asked him if has an opinion on driving with music in cars?

.. and then of course there is closing the windows!

The evidence is unequivocal that closing a car window decreases significantly the amount of audible information the driver receives.
Why is this compromise acceptable in vehicles?

 

[dawesome]

Give a minicab man a few column inches and he'll take a whole bus lane

The chairman of London-based minicab firm Addison Lee has used the company's in-cab magazine to launch a series of eye-catching polemics.


His latest piece is a real humdinger. Perhaps appropriately for an authority figure among drivers, it's a diatribe against cyclists. His sympathy lies with the motorist who might quite understandably fail to spot "a granny wobbling to avoid a pothole or a rain drain" and thus find themselves "guilty of failing to anticipate that this was somebody on her maiden voyage into the abyss". He bemoans cyclists' lack of training, insurance, impact bars, air bags and road tax liability, and ends: "It is time for us to say to cyclists 'You want to join our gang, get trained and pay up'." (His punctuation, not mine.)
This is classic Griffin. A more oleaginous arguer might have conjured up an unsympathetic cyclist: a cocky shades-wearing courier, weaving between cars while listening to his iPod, or a self-promoting politician surrounded by obliging paps and tailed by his ministerial car. But not Griffin – he's happy to go straight for the granny: the stupid, myopic, shaky old biddy, wobbling around the road in the way of minicabs, who doesn't even have the goodness to look where she's going, get a driving licence or buy a fully taxed Lamborghini. The thought that she, and cyclists in general, probably don't want to join his "gang" simply doesn't occur to him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/minicab-addison-lee-griffin-mitchell

 

[growingvegetables]

Listened to the report - it takes a very peculiar and twisted "genius" to talk about his "genuine" concern, when it's no more than a clear, corporate policy of intimidation.

"This is about journalism, poetic licence" - b0ll0x.

Griffin has two obvious opportunities to show he's being misinterpreted

- publish a log of his drivers who have been disciplined for driving without due care and attention for vulnerable road users;
- and putting in the public domain the elements of his company's formal, documented risk assessment related to vulnerable road users.

Something tells me neither of those will be forthcoming.