Crafty Cabbies

The first question they ask at Black Cab School must be: how good were you at playing chicken when you were younger?

Were you always first to run across a railway line, the train only 50 yards away? Did your school-mates say you were reckless, but secretly envy and admire your ability to do something on impulse?

The other day, after I let one black cab out of a side street in Knightsbridge, another one, right behind, decided it was going too.

For me, waving the first one on was courteous enough, and I started to move off, but the second got so close to my front wing that I paused, temporarily paralysed by a vision of crumpled paintwork. It was just long enough for the driver to grab the gap and swing through, his shiny hubcaps briefly burned onto my retina with rage.

It was a game of chicken, and I had lost.

And, just like the audacious, devil-may-care kid at school, it inspired both irritation and admiration.

From the air, they look like a swarm of bulbous black beetles, threading their way through the capital in a frenzy of useful activity, picking people off damp, bone-chilling winter streets and briefly warming them up before depositing them at their destination.

In these chilly, credit crunch times, their amber call lights are a sign of delicious indulgence, a sort of automotive cream cake.

Evolutionary expert Richard Dawkins probably uses black cabs when he's in London, because there's something Darwinian in the urge to squeeze into every channel, to maximise every fare by reaching B at the earliest opportunity.

Driving one is essentially a race - how many other drivers, for example, will ride up alongside you at a zebra crossing, and then take off after the pedestrians have (invariably) cleared their side of it first?

It may not be the survival of the fittest - the average cabby appears to think that ‘five a day' applies to bacon rolls, not fruit and veg - but it's certainly the survival of the nimblest, craftiest drivers, the kings of the cut-through.

And the irritation you feel with them brings you face to face with your own hypocrisy.

If I was behind the wheel of one of those rattly old diesel chuggers, I'd probably cut people up too. And pull out in front of other cars, moments before they arrived at a junction.

Driving with one thing in mind - setting the passenger down in record time - would be like wearing a pair of legitimate, professionally necessary vehicular blinkers.

The government's road safety campaign tells us to THINK - but maybe thinking is the enemy of effective driving. Too much of it, and you miss the gap.

And on the rare occasion when I'm in the back, I want to arrive as soon as possible.

It's all about customer service. Time is money. Step on it.