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The Headlights of Doom
Jun. 3rd, 2007 08:33 amMy taxi-driving career - and my life - almost came to a spectacular halt this morning.
Let me set the scene. After midnight, Canberra's buses stop running. and the city's main bus interchange turns into a temporary taxi rank until dawn. On Friday and Saturday nights this can be a lively place indeed, with hundreds of Canberra's young folk out drinking and making their way between nightclubs, and ultimately queueing up for a taxi home.
It's a whole different world to the daytime hum of shoppers and public servants. Around three in the morning, drunks weave about and pick fights, laneways and doorways become sudden unofficial toilets, police swagger around curbing the unruly, and taxi drivers perform their traditional motorised ballet as they wheel into line, sort out their order of arrival, and progress slowly up and around the central intersection.
There's a little ceremony performed a few minutes before each midnight. The taxi base will ask for the lead taxi on the main city rank outside the cinemas to identify themselves, and a few moments later a message will be broadcast to all cabs - "The Alinga Street rank is now open. Taxi 112 will lead the rest of the cars onto the rank."
I've occasionally led this little procession myself. On quiet nights, passengers will be scarce, and we cabbies will get out of our seats, stretch our legs and form an impromptu social club. The drivers who are smokers light up - as they do after almost every fare.
On busy nights, there is no time for chitchat, and the cabs move steadily forward, loading up the drunks and then departing for the suburbs, returning again and again for more. More passengers, more rides, more money. At some point, the supply of passengers outpaces the stream of cabs, and there will be a wait for transport. Some nights this can take an hour or two, and without security, queue-jumping and fighting are regular activities. The police look on, but only rarely take any significant action.
Early this morning, somewhere within a technicolour shout of three AM, I arrived at the rank, dodged a few wobbling teenagers, and joined the line of taxis. There were flashing police lights at one end of the street, not an uncommon occurrence, but I was surprised to see a police car blocking off an exit, turned sideways across both lanes. Taxis, unable to leave, quickly banked up.
Perhaps they were performing some routine check, I surmised. Sometimes the police enforce the 20 kilometre an hour speed limit. Sometimes they haul over an unwary driver for an on the spot inspection, intended to detect bald tyres and blown headlights. Sometimes they just throw their weight around.
I moved up to the head of the line, ensuring that my speed did not creep above walking pace and that I indicated my turns in an exemplary fashion. A young lady opened the door and got in. "What's all this police stuff?" I asked her. "They are really jumpy tonight!"
"There's been a car chase," she responded, "up and down Northbourne Avenue."
I avoided a police car at my preferred exit and took the exit directly onto Northbourne, costing me a minute or so at a traffic light. Or rather, costing my passenger forty cents waiting time. A couple of other cabs made the same turn, and we headed south around City Hill and onto Canberra Avenue leading over Lake Burley Griffin and down towards Parliament House.
I considered for a bit and worked out why the police cars had been blocking traffic. They hadn't been trying to keep taxis from getting out and into the path of the chase. Rather they had been positioned to stop the chase from pushing through into the bus interchange, where a speeding vehicle would create carnage amongst the young people strolling across the road.
In fact, this had happened once already. Two years ago a police chase had gone right through the middle of the interchange, the underage driver of a stolen car colliding with a university student out for a few drinks with her friends. Her body had been tossed like a plastic toy, and when she landed, she never got up again.
For tonight, I was glad that the on-duty police car was preventing a recurrence, but I wondered about the thoughts passing through the minds of the policemen in their car, putting themselves in harm's hurtling way.
The lake came into view, and I saw a flurry of police cars on the far side, flashing lights blue and red, reflected in the water, making a colourful foreground for the pure white of the floodlit National Library.
"They must have got him," I suggested to my passenger, imagining a young man dragged from a stolen car and roughly handcuffed. Thank goodness.
We headed onto Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, three lanes wide, all southbound - a companion span carries the northwards traffic. I took the centre lane, while to my left and a trifle behind was another cab - we'd both come out of the same traffic light change and neither of us had been game to venture over the speed limit with so many cops around.
In the literal blink of an eye, the scene changed. Over the crest of the bridge appeared a set of headlights, running rapidly towards me. Northward on the southbound lanes. In the centre lane, to be precise. My lane.
Police cars flashing along in pursuit behind it, but it was the oncoming lights of the car being pursued that stole all of my attention. A car being driven at well over the limit by a desperate man, aimed squarely at my beautiful taxi, my startled passenger and my own middle-aged collection of breakable bones and spillable blood. There was a full moon in the sky, but these lights were bigger and brighter in my shocked eyes.
I had maybe a second to react. I moved one lane to the left. Maybe I would hit the taxi travelling along beside me, but this would be a far better deal than a head-on impact.
Perhaps I could have moved to the right, but my reflexes are those of a driver of a right-hand drive vehicle. We move to the left to avoid oncoming traffic. Besides, the right-hand lane was full of police cars in spirited pursuit, and while I might dodge the hare, I'd certainly get cleaned up by the hounds.
Luckily my fellow taxi driver was quick-witted enough to anticipate my sudden move, and he braked as I leaned into his lane. I don't know how many molecules of air seperated us, but it can't have been more than a half dozen. The chase zoomed by in an eyeblink to my right - a jumble of lights and sirens and speedblurs.
And it was gone. My cab, my passenger, and me still intact. Likewise the cab behind, and I'm sorry I didn't get his number.
"Crikey!" I said, "That's not part of my normal shift!"
She smiled nervously back at me as we headed on south to her home, my Saint Germain funky jazz CD playing smoothly along as if nothing had happened.
Let me set the scene. After midnight, Canberra's buses stop running. and the city's main bus interchange turns into a temporary taxi rank until dawn. On Friday and Saturday nights this can be a lively place indeed, with hundreds of Canberra's young folk out drinking and making their way between nightclubs, and ultimately queueing up for a taxi home.
It's a whole different world to the daytime hum of shoppers and public servants. Around three in the morning, drunks weave about and pick fights, laneways and doorways become sudden unofficial toilets, police swagger around curbing the unruly, and taxi drivers perform their traditional motorised ballet as they wheel into line, sort out their order of arrival, and progress slowly up and around the central intersection.
There's a little ceremony performed a few minutes before each midnight. The taxi base will ask for the lead taxi on the main city rank outside the cinemas to identify themselves, and a few moments later a message will be broadcast to all cabs - "The Alinga Street rank is now open. Taxi 112 will lead the rest of the cars onto the rank."
I've occasionally led this little procession myself. On quiet nights, passengers will be scarce, and we cabbies will get out of our seats, stretch our legs and form an impromptu social club. The drivers who are smokers light up - as they do after almost every fare.
On busy nights, there is no time for chitchat, and the cabs move steadily forward, loading up the drunks and then departing for the suburbs, returning again and again for more. More passengers, more rides, more money. At some point, the supply of passengers outpaces the stream of cabs, and there will be a wait for transport. Some nights this can take an hour or two, and without security, queue-jumping and fighting are regular activities. The police look on, but only rarely take any significant action.
Early this morning, somewhere within a technicolour shout of three AM, I arrived at the rank, dodged a few wobbling teenagers, and joined the line of taxis. There were flashing police lights at one end of the street, not an uncommon occurrence, but I was surprised to see a police car blocking off an exit, turned sideways across both lanes. Taxis, unable to leave, quickly banked up.
Perhaps they were performing some routine check, I surmised. Sometimes the police enforce the 20 kilometre an hour speed limit. Sometimes they haul over an unwary driver for an on the spot inspection, intended to detect bald tyres and blown headlights. Sometimes they just throw their weight around.
I moved up to the head of the line, ensuring that my speed did not creep above walking pace and that I indicated my turns in an exemplary fashion. A young lady opened the door and got in. "What's all this police stuff?" I asked her. "They are really jumpy tonight!"
"There's been a car chase," she responded, "up and down Northbourne Avenue."
I avoided a police car at my preferred exit and took the exit directly onto Northbourne, costing me a minute or so at a traffic light. Or rather, costing my passenger forty cents waiting time. A couple of other cabs made the same turn, and we headed south around City Hill and onto Canberra Avenue leading over Lake Burley Griffin and down towards Parliament House.
I considered for a bit and worked out why the police cars had been blocking traffic. They hadn't been trying to keep taxis from getting out and into the path of the chase. Rather they had been positioned to stop the chase from pushing through into the bus interchange, where a speeding vehicle would create carnage amongst the young people strolling across the road.
In fact, this had happened once already. Two years ago a police chase had gone right through the middle of the interchange, the underage driver of a stolen car colliding with a university student out for a few drinks with her friends. Her body had been tossed like a plastic toy, and when she landed, she never got up again.
For tonight, I was glad that the on-duty police car was preventing a recurrence, but I wondered about the thoughts passing through the minds of the policemen in their car, putting themselves in harm's hurtling way.
The lake came into view, and I saw a flurry of police cars on the far side, flashing lights blue and red, reflected in the water, making a colourful foreground for the pure white of the floodlit National Library.
"They must have got him," I suggested to my passenger, imagining a young man dragged from a stolen car and roughly handcuffed. Thank goodness.
We headed onto Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, three lanes wide, all southbound - a companion span carries the northwards traffic. I took the centre lane, while to my left and a trifle behind was another cab - we'd both come out of the same traffic light change and neither of us had been game to venture over the speed limit with so many cops around.
In the literal blink of an eye, the scene changed. Over the crest of the bridge appeared a set of headlights, running rapidly towards me. Northward on the southbound lanes. In the centre lane, to be precise. My lane.
Police cars flashing along in pursuit behind it, but it was the oncoming lights of the car being pursued that stole all of my attention. A car being driven at well over the limit by a desperate man, aimed squarely at my beautiful taxi, my startled passenger and my own middle-aged collection of breakable bones and spillable blood. There was a full moon in the sky, but these lights were bigger and brighter in my shocked eyes.
I had maybe a second to react. I moved one lane to the left. Maybe I would hit the taxi travelling along beside me, but this would be a far better deal than a head-on impact.
Perhaps I could have moved to the right, but my reflexes are those of a driver of a right-hand drive vehicle. We move to the left to avoid oncoming traffic. Besides, the right-hand lane was full of police cars in spirited pursuit, and while I might dodge the hare, I'd certainly get cleaned up by the hounds.
Luckily my fellow taxi driver was quick-witted enough to anticipate my sudden move, and he braked as I leaned into his lane. I don't know how many molecules of air seperated us, but it can't have been more than a half dozen. The chase zoomed by in an eyeblink to my right - a jumble of lights and sirens and speedblurs.
And it was gone. My cab, my passenger, and me still intact. Likewise the cab behind, and I'm sorry I didn't get his number.
"Crikey!" I said, "That's not part of my normal shift!"
She smiled nervously back at me as we headed on south to her home, my Saint Germain funky jazz CD playing smoothly along as if nothing had happened.
