It maybe all the rage among BMW-driving reps, but London’s cabbies are spurning SatNav in favour of the tried-and trusted Knowledge.
According to Bob Oddy, general secretary of the London Taxi Drivers’ Association, few drivers have bothered to install the technology since they were permitted earlier this year.
‘I would say take-up has been about four or five per cent, maybe higher for drivers doing the airport runs and those doing jobs in the London suburbs,’ Oddy said.
‘Regardless of the salesmen’s hype about these machines they cannot match the knowledge and experience of a good cabbie,’ he added.
London cabbies have to pass an exam known as the Knowledge by learning 320 standard routes plus major arterial roads outside central London, the locations of public buildings and numerous short cuts.
They also want to avoid the kind of catastrophe that befell SatNav users in Wiltshire earlier this year, where farmers in the village Luckington were earning £25 a time for towing cars out of a ford in the River Avon.
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