WHAT is almost as disturbing as the disclosure today that 85 per cent of private-hire cabs in Blackburn and Darwen fail their MoT test on the first attempt is the fact that the curse of the clapped-out cabs seems never to go away.

Time after time and year after year, safety blitzes by police and councils in East Lancashire come up with alarming levels of unfit and unsafe cabs.

The resistant cab trade habitually claims that the stringency of the tests varies from authority to authority and the frequency and cost of them make life too hard for its operators.

But the weary fact remains that repeatedly-high rates of safety faults suggests that officialdom breathing down their necks is as much asked for as it is warranted.

And, as we discover today from the findings of safety inspections in Blackburn and Darwen, it is not just officials who are concerned.

Passenger surveys show that a large percentage of the public is unhappy about the state of the cabs they have used.

They are right to be so - it is, after all, their safety, comfort and value-for-money that are the yardsticks in all of this.

And if the licensing authorities are setting standards in line with these expectations, they can hardly be set too high. The explosion of the cab and taxi trade in the past 15 or so years has been a striking social phenomenon that has too often raced ahead of regulation.

Having strong associations with the black economy, it has thankfully progressed from the time when licences were issued like confetti to largely unvetted applicants and B-Reg bangers with short insurance cover notes plied for trade.

But even with all the subsequent tightening up, the evidence of the safety checks is that the trade still has some way to go before it reaches the realm of proper responsibility.

Not all operators are corner-cutting cowboys, but there are still too many about.

And the drive by councils to fix age limits on private hire cabs - a principle upheld by the courts - is a move that needs to be taken to end the weary familiarity of droves of dangerous cabs being found on our roads.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.