Whangarei taxi driver Dot Himiona has been forced off the road after a man literally ran over her cab. The man ran straight at her car, leapt on the bonnet, shattered the windscreen, dented the roof, smashed the rear window and then fled. Now Ms Himiona is waiting for insurance assessorsto decide whether the cab is worth repairing. It is the second attack on an A1 Cab driver in as many weeks and now the firm is investing in Global Positioning Systems to keep drivers safe. Whangarei's Richard Watts, 71, remains off work and nursing a nasty black eye after being brutally attacked by a drunk passenger. Ms Himiona was refusing to let the incident deter her from her job of the last three years. On Sunday about 5am she had just dropped a passenger off in Tikipunga and was on her way back to the central city when she noticed a parked car with a few people standing around outside. "I saw a guy break away and start running towards my car. I thought he might be in trouble and trying to get a ride," she said. She pulled over to the side of the road and thought the man was then running off. "He kept coming at me and I slowed right down." The man ran over the car and fled to the car he had originally been standing next to. Ms Himiona radioed for help and gave a description of the car to her fellow taxi drivers. It was spotted in a driveway and boxed in by another four taxi drivers, who waited for police to arrive and arrest a man. Ms Himiona's taxi was towed away. A1 Cabs owner Robert Gregory held a meeting on Tuesday to look at ways to make his drivers safer. Seven of the company's cars had GPS radios and another 30 were to be ordered for the fleet. The GPS links back to a screen at the main dispatch office to pinpoint exactly where the drivers are. "If they need help we know exactly where to go."
