Bundy taxi driver's tell-all book

Between fares cab driver Alan Griffiths can be found writing notes for his book on the colourful life of a cabbie.

Scottie Simmonds

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A BUNDABERG taxi driver has decided to write a book about his 25 years behind the wheel – during which he has been assaulted five times, offered sexual favours in lieu of fares and been forced to witness all manner of lewd and appalling behaviour.

Alan Griffiths, who contacted the NewsMail after reading a recent story about fed-up taxi drivers considering a blacklist for badly behaved passengers, reckons he was safer during his two-year stint as a guard at Maryborough Correction Facility’s maximum security prison.

“A prisoner didn’t land so much as a finger on me the whole time I was in there,” he said.

“It sounds funny, but I was probably better off in there than I am in the driver’s seat of a taxi.”

Mr Griffiths is now writing a collection of short stories he has collected during his years driving taxis in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay.

The manuscript has been tentatively titled Voices from the Back Seat and details Mr Griffiths’ observations about the highs and lows of excess, made from the rear-vision mirror of his taxi.

Mr Griffiths said cab drivers often saw the full gamut of human emotions play out in the back seat of their vehicles and saw the ugly side of human nature.

Over the course of his career he has been the victim of violent assault five times.

“There’s a reason I wear my hair short,” he said.

“I’ve been smacked in the head by both men and women.

"If it’s short, they can’t grab it when they go for me.”

He has also seen people having sex in the back seat and was once even forced to clean up after a young woman left a used tampon in his car.

The veteran cabbie is not quite ready to walk the line of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, but admits the job sometimes gets the better of him.

“Sometimes all you can do is shake your head in disbelief,” he said.

“It’s the nice people you meet who make it all worthwhile, though.”

He is certain the people of Bundaberg will continue to give him good material.

“Something new comes up pretty much every week,” he said.

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something comes from left field.”