LETTERS London's pride
Sir: I thought that the way in which otherwise reasonable human beings are regularly reduced to raging lunatics by London traffic is so much part of life's rich pattern that I did not bother to add to Marina Salandy-Brown's sad tale. But Harry Feigen's pious suggestion (Letters, 4 August) that it was unusual or justified is nonsense.
A few weeks ago a taxi driver was so incensed by failing to cut me up under Admiralty Arch (driving fast down the middle of the Mall followed by trying to force his way violently into the traffic going through the arch), that he pursued me as far as Edith Cavell's statue in Charing Cross Road.
There he overtook on the inside, pulled in front of me, stopped and got out (leaving two passengers in the back), came to my window, pushed his fist in my face and threatened me for a minute or so. The teenaged American girl whom I had just collected from Victoria Station was re- duced to tears and most of the traffic in Charing Cross Road was obstructed.
Eventually he went away and we took his number and meant to report him to the Carriage Office, but what point would there have been in that? It was a baking hot day and the poor man had simply been driven insane by the awfulness of his job.
I am sure that similar things happen all the time and that is one of the penalties of city life, but to pretend that they do not is just silly.
Hugh Geddes
30 Oval Road, London NW1
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