Sir, - I write as the wife of a Dublin taxi driver, until now an unheard voice. I wish to present the human side of the man behind the wheel, a view which has been lost amid the melee.
My husband has worked as a taxi driver, serving the needs of the public, for the past 12 years and for six of those we have been married. Our life has been almost entirely based on our commitments, financial, physical and emotional, to my husband's taxi-driving business.
It is true we have enjoyed a relatively good material lifestyle, with a few luxuries here and there, but the benefits have not justified the price. We are ships passing in the night. My husband works an average of 14 hours a day over a nine-night fortnight, and as I work nine to five daily, there are times when I do not see him for several days. When he does take time off, he is too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to do much except try to recover from the previous 98-hour week.
I dread the telephone call which might come in the night to say that he has been attacked or involved in an accident with a drunken driver or a stolen car. I cannot count the number of times when he has come home and regaled me accounts of terrifying situations after he stopped for the "wrong" people. He has been threatened with syringes and physically and verbally abused. His car has been kicked and banged, not to mention the numerous "results" of too much drink, all of this from some of those members of the public who are so bitterly complaining about the guy who just wants to take them home and earn his living.
My husband is a hard-working, courteous, intelligent gentleman who is trying to go about his work in the best manner possible in order to pay back the money he borrowed to buy into his job. He is prepared to put up with the hassle of the traffic, the seamier side of Dublin at night and the abuse he gets, with the associated threat of violence, in order to get on and meet his commitments. There are also, of course, upsides to his job, when he gets the nice guy in his taxi who shares a joke, the child who prompts a smile with an innocent remark, or the person who just treats him as what he is, an intelligent human being.
So please remember, the next time you sit in a taxi, the driver is somebody's husband, father or son. Don't threaten him, refuse to pay, abuse him or generally treat him as just another "scumbag" taxi driver. He just wants to do his job and get home in one piece at the end of his shift, as do all the other workers in this world whose jobs are considered dangerous and unsociable.
Friends often remark that, metaphorically speaking, I am a taxi widow; I just hope it remains a metaphor. - Yours etc.,
Wendy O'Brien, Blackrock, Co Dublin.