In other local news, blind and mad taxi drivers are still on our streets despite a certain columnist for The New Paper having highlighted the problem for months.

A test by our crack news team, consisting of the said columnist and his staff, held over a period of one week showed that despite 387 taxis with blue lights whizzing past them from the time between 8pm and midnight from Monday to Friday, not one taxi stopped to pick them up despite their frantic flagging.

Said the columnist: "It is a big concern to me that our taxis are being driven by blind men.

"This, to my knowledge, is very dangerous because if you???re blind, it usually means that you can't see where you're going."

The columnist also ruled out the possibility that the taxi drivers could have simply missed their flagging.

He said: "At one point, we even waved a flag to catch their attention, but to no avail."

While the taxi drivers' vision was in question, there was no doubt that their sense of hearing was elevated.

The moment someone made a call booking, the taxis appeared straight away.

A taxi company, who was uncomfortable being named, disputed our test conclusions.

Said the spokesman: "To my knowledge, there are no blind taxi drivers in our fleet.

"As to why they didn't stop to pick up the columnist, apparently, they thought that the columnists were practising flagging off, in preparation for the Formula One race that might be coming to Singapore soon.

"Hence, they decided to do their part and speed past them like an F1 racer would."

A bigger concern was the employment of mentally-challenged taxi drivers.

One of the test team took a taxi last weekend and the driver was wearing a cowboy hat.

The Singapore Cowboy apparently likes travelling at speeds up to 140 kmh and each time he overtook a car, he went: "Yee-ha!"

Another tester took another taxi a few days later with another scary driver.

He said: "If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was Beetlejuice driving."

What confirmed it was the driver's tendency to repeat things three times, same as what Beetlejuice did in the movie.

Below is a recording of the conversation.

Tester: "Uncle, Robinson Road please."

Driver (in the voice of Beetlejuice): ???Robinson Road, Robinson Road, Robinson Road.???

The spokesman of the uncomfortable cab company also had an explanation for this.

He said: "The drivers did not escape from Woodbridge. It is part of our initiative to provide more entertainment for passengers in our rides. The drivers were not mad, they were just impersonating famous characters."

Thank you for watching TNA, The New Paper News Asia.

Good night.

This article first appeared in the New Paper on 7 April 2007