Around 200 London taxi drivers held the third of three "Ply for Trade" protests on 27th July 2012 to protest against what they and their representative organisations - the RMT Union and the United Cabbies Group (UCG) - say are excessively restrictive limitations on the use of the specially created Olympic traffic lanes strictly reserved for the transport of athletes, Olympic officials and elite corporate guests which will cause severe damage to licensed taxi drivers' ability to pick up, transport and drop off passengers for the two month duration of the Olympic games.

Nicknamed "Zil lanes" after the exclusive traffic lanes created in Soviet Russia to solely transport Communist Party officials, the often badly-planned lanes appear destined to create chaos and massive frustration for Londoners trying to go about their business, with punitive fixed £120 fines being imposed on anyone caught in these lanes, even though there are many places where it is impossible to get where you're going by road without crossing one of these lanes.

The evening before the Metropolitan Police had issued a banning order on their planned protest on Hyde Park Corner, at the end of Park Lane where most of the top Olympic Officials are quartered in 5-star hotels. The order fobad them to commence their protest after 4pm, so the cabbies hurriedly took legal advice and decided to hold their protest at 2pm instead, with equal effect, bringing traffic from 5 different directions grinding to a complete halt for about an hour before police started blocking off some roads and directing traffic out of the immediate area.