TAXI-CAB DRIVERS & CITY COUNCILLOR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1142, 1 June 1911, Page 5

TAXI-CAB DRIVERS & CITY COUNCILLOR.

t - CONTROVERSY CLOSED. [To the Editor.] Sir,—Mr. Fitzgerald is not keeping to the point. The challenge was made. Will Mr. Fitzgerald accept it as made? That is the point and the whole point. It is futile for him to endeavour to break away • from it. K is exceedingly easy for him to endeavour to confuse the issue by discoursing about the drivers who are not standing in with us, and also to speak about holding over for the judgment of any capable judge the question whether a taxi-cab driver's record during, say, the past twelvo months is not a more proper test of his competency for street driving than his passing certain specified tests. Mr. Fitzgerald apparently imagines that the driver's record is conclusive evidence of want of skill, forgetting that the facts of each individual case must stand by themselves. If all the facts were gone into, it is quite probable that it could be shown that the accidents complained of wero caused not by incompetence on the part of the driver but by negligence on the part of the person injured. Does Mr. Fitzgerald desire to institute an inquiry into each of the accidents which has occurred during the past twelvo months, and call evidence on both sides with a view of deciding the matter, or does he simply wish to take the mere fact of an accident as conclusive proof that a driver is to blame? Mr. Fitzgerald says it is idle to waste time taking unfair objections Wo have made no objections. We issued the challenge, and desire to stand or fall by that challenge. Wo exceedingly regret that we have been obliged to trespass so much upon your space. We can only say in conclusion that we all always have been ready to carry out the challenge it it is taken up. We note that Mr. litzgerald would like you to act as judge between us. May we ask, sir, if you have had any practical experience with motorcars, and whether you consider yourself sufficiently expert to act in that capacity? If so, we bavo no objection,— We are, etc., F. G. BUTLER, GEO. FERNANDOS. [Our correspondents in this controversy do not appear to bo at all likely to como to any agreement as to the nature of the test to be applied, and in the circumstances we cannot spare them '""licr space to continue their argument, lno cheque for which Councillor I'itzgerald deposited with us in the terms of his first reply to Messrs. Butler and Fernandas, will therefore be returned to Win,]