To be a bit shocked by this court ruling?

[Wowthishurtsalot]

Just read in the daily fail that a court has ruled bus companies have no right to make pushchair users move from the wheelchair spaces on buses

Can anyone find this in a better source?

Has the woman in question ever made a statement to defend herself?

(Wondering if this will be translated into some kind of vindication of her position....)

As harsh as it seems the issue wasn't ever with the bus company.

They - and the driver - cannot be held responsible for the woman's appalling lack of ability to do the decent thing.

It's a tough one. I use public transport with my daughter in her buggy, she's disabled. Who wins? Would I have to have a 'disability off' with the wheelchair user just because my daughters disability isn't so visible.. I really think it has to be first come first served. I have to wait in the cold with my disabled child and wouldn't dream of asking whoever was in the buggy spot to move so I could get on.

I'm sure someone will have a much more reasoned argument than me but I just think it's never that easy..

twojumpingbeans - your situation isn't comparible.

With a disabled child, you are using the correct spacing and yes, in that situation it is first come first served. If however a parent is simply using that space with a buggy, they should move for both you and/or another wheelchair user

Bet that Linkedin user is well confused about why his profile views have gone through the roof!

I have reported the post but HQ aren't too quick!

That's the problem though - they do refuse to move or collapse the pram. This case was bought by someone who experienced this and had to wait for the next bus. There's nothing to say the next bus wouldn't also have pram users in the space, or the one after that or the one after that.

I'm not saying that never happens. There will always be assholes everywhere, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a common problem. I'm just saying we have that law, we also allow bus drivers to refuse service to anyone for any reason and it hasn't really caused a big problem here in the US. It's rare that a person won't give up their space for a wheelchair.

This law won't stop people from being good people. It also won't stop assholes from being assholes. It certainly won't stop a bus full of people from ganging up on the mother and telling her to move for the guy. It will just stop the bus driver for being legally liable for the assholes. Making a bus stop and wait for the police is an impractical plan as well as it will stop the traveling time for the other passengers who can then lodge a complaint. The driver is in a lose-lose either way.

I think a fair compromise would be to call a head, so the police could meet him at a future stop, then disable their oyster card so that they can't get on the buses again for a period of time. I don't know how possible that is, are the cards tied to a name? If so, it'd be easy enough.

Fyrefly, private companies have to comply with disability discrimination legislation in just the same way as public bodies.

The court didn't say that bus companies had no right to make selfish buggy users move, it simply said that they don't have a duty to do so. It is still perfectly open to bus companies to have a policy in place that they will indeed make buggy users fold up their buggies or move in order to allow wheelchair users on, and I for one hope that they will do so.

It is, of course, untrue to say that there is nothing bus companies can do to force people to move. They can and do do this regularly when, for instance, they need to get someone who is being drunk and objectionable off the bus: they simply refuse to move the bus till that person leaves. It would take an extraordinarily thick-skinned buggy user to sit there indefinitely with the hatred of an entire busload of passengers directed at him or her.

The ruling seems to say that bus companies have to comply with disability discrimination law, but are not obligated to enforce it, which is fair enough. It is the police's job to enforce the law, not a bus driver's. But what I find even more astonishing is that anyone would be so selfish as to tell a disabled guy to fuck off because they wanted to stay put. I can only home most women are more considerate that the woman in this case.

a shout of glee from the selfish feckers who CAN walk and carry their babies wholl be able to walk soon. and their shopping bags..

once again, discrimination for disabled.

WHY ISNT SOMETHING DONE?

cant be rascist, cant be ageist, cant be homophobic, but yay, by all means mock the disabled yet again.

signs on buses say PRIORITY for disabled. and they really should bring back conductorsm the drivers got more than enough to do.

Bus conductors would be a great idea for lots of reasons.

Yes the driver could have stopped the bus but probably due to targets for lateness he didn't choose this option! (Cynical I know!) If he'd tried to physically move the mother then the drive would also have been in the wrong so he was in a no win situation from his point of view.

Out of interest a hypothetical situation. Would it be the company's fault if their entrance had a ramp and it was blocked with a pushchair then the mother refused to move when a wheelchair user came. I appreciate not very likely to happen but would people say the company was at fault?

I can see the difficulty for the driver.

What if the child in the pushchair had a hidden disability?

Out of interest a hypothetical situation. Would it be the company's fault if their entrance had a ramp and it was blocked with a pushchair then the mother refused to move when a wheelchair user came. I appreciate not very likely to happen but would people say the company was at fault?

Just as likely I'd say as some selfish woman refusing to move for a wheelchair user on a bus, I'd say. But no, companies only have an obligation to comply with the law. Not enforce it. Enforcing the law is the duty of the Police and court officials. It is the sort of law they couldn't give a fuck about.

What if the child in the pushchair had a hidden disability?

He does have. His mother is a cunt.

Elephants I'm not talking about this case, I'm talking in general.
If a bus driver threw a parent and child off the bus to give the space to a wheelchair user, and it then turned out that the child or parent had a disability themselves, would the bus company be getting sued again.

Is it fair to put a bus driver in the position of having to judge who needs the space more?

Sadly I could see a lot of people, men and women refusing to move if they couldn't easily collapse their pram.

I used buses a lot when ds was a baby, as I said it's not much of a problem as here there is a wheelchair zone and a buggy zone.

The court ruling may have been right but that does not mean that the mother was.

The legal requirement is for reasonable adjustments to be made by the bus company. Expecting a driver to force a group of aggressive entitled mumzillas to move may be a bit much.

Surely the major problem here doesn't lie with the mother, but with the bus company? Which could be solved by them providing more suitable spaces rather than playing neediness top trumps putting fare paying passengers against each other.

Plus there are the difficulties with policing it as pyjama said.

What if someone is turfed off the bus or forced to stand and suffers an injury or aggravation of a medical condition as a result?? We could have yet another court case and costly compensation not to mention the effect on the displaced passenger.

I don't see how this can be enforceable because you could have a mum with disabilities who is unable to hold small child on their laps being asked to move for a wheelchair user who could then equally say that she was discriminated against both as a disabled person and as a mother (protected under discrimination law). The judges have made the right decision because someone may be in a wheelchair but they may be a para Olympian with more ability than mother with brain injury/back injury/amputed leg with prosthetic leg. A bus driver does not have that kind of decision in their hands, they are not trained to judge people's abilities.

Link to judgment

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2014/1573.html

The bus companies needed to know where they stand and now they do. The only possible and enforceable change to the law would be to require them to require drivers to refuse to move until buggy-user folds. Not sure how that would play with the public.

What if the child in the pushchair had a hidden disability?

The mother could have a hidden disability too though, if we're going to be fair about this. There's plenty of disabilities that aren't apparent from a glance.

If the bus driver makes the mistake of kicking one disabled person off in favor of another it could be a law suit. Conversely, making it so that only disabled people can sit there will suddenly see a rise in "hidden disabilities" from people that don't want to get off.

To DecaffCoffeeAndRollupsPlease's point, the current wheel chair spaces have a chair that folds up here to make room. We really should just take away the fold up seat so that if a wheelchair person isn't there, it's just standing room, with no place to sit. Like a big space before all the rows start. Then pushchair users can be on the opposite side with a seat so they have a place for the baby. Some buses I've ridden on have taken out the fold up seat, or simply keep it folded up and locked unless it gets too crowded.

elephantspoo you describe the mother in a manner which i would not date to imitate but you are so, so right. The worst that could happen to har would be a mardy baby. Tough. She'd still be using the bus.

You can bet if this had got to court just before we hosted the Paralympics it would have either been delayed or there would have been a different outcome. Because they wouldnt have wanted this in the news around that time.