There has been quite a flurry of complaints within the pages of this newspaper directed towards one of the country’s most notorious menace; motorcycle taxis, commonly known as taxi-moto. Many people accuse the operators of being a law unto themselves, with no respect to pedestrians and passengers alike. Make the mistake of getting into a traffic altercation with any of them – even when they are in the wrong – and in no time at all, a gang of menacing riders surround you in defence of their comrade They have turned into some bunch of untouchables who obey no traffic rules, leave alone the police. What is most worrying is that most of their sins are committed right under the noses of traffic police and they easily get away with it. Some years ago, commuter taxi drivers behaved the same way until they began to swallow the bitter pill of hefty traffic fines. Their respective associations were brought on board and they leaned hard on errant drivers until they were brought back in line. Why can’t the same apply to taximotos? Maybe it is time the police introduced the point deduction system for every traffic offence. That would be a big wakeup call taxi-moto operators will not fail to notice. But in the meantime, there should be a protracted operation by law enforcement units to bring sanity back among the riders because their impunity is causing a lot of grief among many families.
