Taxi Driver Online

Or maybe that should be cannabis 'wrap'

No mention of the licensing council or whatever, but Glastonbury seems to be in the Somerset Council area, which is a unitary authority. And never really seems to feature in the news...

And you'd think there might be a lot of illegality issues at Glasto like at the Reading Festival, the Henley Regatta or Cheltenham Festival. But maybe Somerset Council a bit like Fife, and nothing to see here, kind of thing. Or maybe they just don't publicise the stuff they do, and the local press generally isn't interested in that kind of thing


Glastonbury Festival taxi driver banned for drug driving

https://www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk ... g-driving/

A TAXI driver who was ferrying customers to the Glastonbury Festival has been given a 16-month ban after being caught drug-driving.

Armando Mariano was found to be more than double the limit for cannabis when police pulled him over as he was dropping off passengers at the festival site in Pilton last year.

After failing a drugs test at the roadside he was arrested and charged by police and appeared in the dock before Somerset Magistrates.

His solicitor Joseph Wright told the Bench that his client had been a taxi driver for the past 20 years and now faced the prospect of having no income to support his family for the first time in his life.

Mariano, 53, of Lundy Drive, Burnham-on-Sea, pleaded guilty to driving on the A37at Worthy Farm on June 25 when the proportion of cannabis in his system exceeded the legal limit.

Prosecutor Jennifer Knape said that police were on duty during the Glastonbury Festival and saw the defendant, who was driving his taxi, dropping off customers at the site.

“The officers had their suspicions that there may have been an issue of drugs, so pulled Mariano over and asked him to take a drugs test,” she said.

“He was positive for cannabis and then arrested, and when blood samples were taken they revealed the level of cannabis in his blood was 4.7 when the limit is 2.”

Mr Wright said that no reference was made that his client’s manner of driving had been affected that day and said he had been pulled over initially due to a potential document offence.

“He had no idea he was over the limit after smoking cannabis the night before, and this is something that people are often caught out with,” he said.

“The only person who will lose is the defendant as he has been a taxi driver for 20 years and will now lose his licence and is going to have no income for the first time in his life.”

The magistrates told Mariano that it was an aggravating factor in the case that he was acting as a professional driver at the time of the offence and carrying paying fares.

They disqualified him from driving for 16 months and also fined him £120 with £85 costs and a £48 victim surcharge.

I wonder what raised the suspicions about drugs, precisely?

I mean, giving that he was only twice over the limit (and the limits are set at a very low level so as not to catch out accidental contamination etc), then presumably he wasn't exactly off his face, or whatever, and nothing to suggest his driving was affected.

I'd guess police maybe had some sort of intel

canabis is one of the easiest to spot it stinks ! as for the title a missed opportunity methinks.

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Reading the narrative I can't see how the smell of canabbis could have been a factor.

Unless the pax were using it, and the police smelt it when the pulled the car over for the document check.

Even then, I doubt they'd automatically test the driver without some obvious evidence he'd been the one using it - at the likes of Glasto, punters taking cannabis can hardly be unusual

usually it's a passenger that smells it and reports it to the police

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Thousands and thousands.

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IDFIMH

It's never the police being lucky.

I suspect someone dobbed him in it.

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IDFIMH

Took this young guy to Dundee earlier - stinking of weed, and he was in the car well over half an hour

Went for a bit of shopping in Tesco after I dropped him. So that was ten minutes' drive away, and I was in the shop another 15 minutes or so.

So got back in the car, probably almost half an hour after I dropped him, and car still stinking of weed

Back at the station at Leuchars now, hoping for a run into town, and got out and walked around for a few minutes, and can still smell it, despite having all the windows open for a couple of minutes while driving back from Dundee.

So think I'll have to innocently ask my next job whether they smell anything, just in case they say nothing and think it's me, and maybe even report me

Reminds me of these people with really pungent smelling takeaways, and they get out and you think the smell is gone. But it's still there when you get back in the car in the morning (I think it's probably garlic)

Never known the smell of weed to linger like this, though...

So I suppose if you habitually smoke in the car then the smell might linger overnight, even if there's very little left in your system