Los Angeles Cabbie in Crash That Killed 6 Had No License
A driver whose taxi was crushed by a Blue Line train in Compton, killing all six in the car, had two convictions for drunken driving, was driving with a suspended license and had no permit to operate a taxi in Compton, authorities said Monday. The driver, 42-year-old Romaldo Gonzalez, may have used a radio scanner to intercept a dispatcher's call from a licensed cab company late Saturday. He then apparently zigzagged around a crossing gate and tried to outrun a southbound train, which blew its horn to no avail. His passengers included three brothers and a woman returning home from a party nearby. The sixth victim was an unidentified woman. It was the latest of many accidents in which cars have been struck by trains along the busy Los Angeles-Long Beach light rail line. The crash, on Greenleaf Boulevard at Willowbrook Avenue, highlighted not only the ongoing problem of drivers trying to outrun light rail trains but also the danger posed by unlicensed taxi drivers, who can be all but indistinguishable from legitimate cabbies. "It's an extremely serious problem," said Tom Drischler, the taxicab administrator for the city of Los Angeles.My Sardonic Thoughts
- Clearly this guy should not be allowed to drive.
- Take his license away.... oops, they already did this.
- I think this is clear justification for tighter controls on licensing of drivers, they should have to be registered or something.
- Shouldn't they have to register their radios too? If his radio license was registered then, clearly, he wouldn't have been able to use it illegally.
- Maybe we should get all cabs off of the street, make the road a safer place to drive.
- Maybe we should pass a law to register trains too.
- To me, these arguments are valid, they are the same ones being used for tighter gun control laws...
