Another buggy in wheelchair space thread

[MsAR]

I got on the bus at the same time as a wheelchair user was queuing to do so. The driver told the wheelchair user there wasn't room, so I quickly checked and saw it was a buggy and a shopping trolley in the space.

The driver told the wheelchair user there would be another bus in a few minutes and they didn't seem to mind and weren't particularly insistent about getting on.

Was I being unreasonable to step in at this point and tell the driver that the person with the buggy should get off as wheelchairs have priority? He was pretty annoyed when I did, and kept repeating that there wasn't space.

I'm in London, and there are clear signs on every bus stating this is the case. I've often had to get off a bus when a wheelchair needed to get on and would never question if asked to do so.

Would it also be unreasonable for me to complain to TFL? I know I'm being a busy body but the driver's attitude really irritated me! I'd like the mumsnet jury to help me decide what to do, if anything.

I do think the best way forward is to have buses with two spaces, like ours do. One for wheelchairs and one for Prams.

We need to be mindful of the environment. Making it more difficult for Prams users to access buses will push some onto using cars. Small barriers to use can push people into using a different method of transport. That replicated over the country could have quite an effect.

I certainly wouldn't be in favour of having a pass to allow a sn baby to ride with a pram up - having continually having to explain their situation is upsetting especially when they are new and you are getting used to the idea. One of the few times it felt normal was when she wAs out and about in her pram. One of the few times I had real difficulty was in the health centre. Prams were banned. I dared to go to the desk with baby in pram and was shouted at by the receptionist. She wouldn't listen to the fact I couldn't carry baby, a large cylinder of oxygen and pump.

I do think the best way forward is to have buses with two spaces, like ours do. One for wheelchairs and one for Prams.

Most big city buses too. Makes no difference. Prams take up both quite often.

I've seen some right arrogant new parent idiots on buses before when I used to take them (pre-kid days), massive massive buggies and nasty, angry morons who think they have every right to take up all the space they want as they have a new baby and they're just special snowflakes. It's an effing wheelchair space ffs. For wheelchairs. You're lucky if you have a pushchair and manage to grab a spot but if a wheelchair comes on board you need to be able to move because they have the right to be there and you don't. You're a selfish, stupid a-hole if you've brought a large, awkward, non-folding buggy onboard something as compact as a bus environment. SN buggies should count as wheelchairs. People managed to use buses with children AND NO BUGGIES in the "old" days so why are they sudden utterly incapable now?

How many times does the disabled toilet get used in one day though by a disabled person?

Are you counting? More than you think and more than it could be if it wasn't full of arseholes who think it's a free for all. Like the disabled access toilet in work. Because it is legally accessible for all it has become inaccessible for disabled as it's always bloody engaged by staff who use it for a nice comfy place for a dump (yes they boost about this) sit on their phones, use it as a changing room and as an executive washroom! It's never frigging free for a disabled person to use!

IT does depend on whether you want to encourage or discourage bus use.

Don't forget there has been a lot of social change in the past twenty years or so. You don't always use ( or can't get into) the local school, women work more outside the home and people don't always live near families as they used to.

Discouraging bus use is fine, but don't forget, less take on that route the the route itself may be at risk. Push the more well off from using bus route means they are less likely to support subsidies etc.

Because it is legally accessible for all
This is widely misinterpreted. It is accessible for all those with disabilities, the wording was changed to encompass those with unseen disabilities. It doesn't mean it's a free for all and your HR department should be enforcing this.

Theonlyway I do rather think that your situation warrants use of convenient, clean and larger than average space. My stepmother had a radar key for administering her insulin when we were out and about.

So, these accommodations that are provided because of the DDA - is there any actual requirement for the company providing them to make sure that they are actually available to disabled people rather than being taken over by the able bodied? Because if not, there needs to be. Wheelchair spaces filled by buggies while the wheelchair user is stuck at the bus stop, disabled toilets constantly occupied by able bodied people using them as changing rooms, sounds like a complete travesty of what was intended. Utterly ridiculous if the company can tick the box by building the accessible toilet and then ignore their responsibility for ensuring it is available to the people who need it.

Back in the 70s and 80s more people used buses, more buggy where taken on board each bus, I remember going on buses with my parents where at least 6 folded buggys would be on each journey. Everyone managed to fold, sort kids, carry shopping etc because they had no choice. I also remember people campaigning for wheelchair spaces for years because without the spaces they could not travel by bus, they campaigned for equal access. Now self absorbed parents think they gave a right over them when all they have to do is fold like my parents generation did. It's rare to see 6 + buggies on a bus now, back then it was the norm and guess what? Everybody got on the bus and everybody folded.

Headofthehive55 you say Making it more difficult for Prams users to access buses will push some onto using cars - true, but so will leaving less room for people who have neither a wheelchair nor a pram/buggy but still need to make the journey. Both devices take up more space than a person with neither, but the wheeler has no choice and the buggyist does.

The only exception is the non-folding buggy, a selfish piece of kit to buy if you are ever planning to use a bus, and yes, in the last resort the user of one of those must get off to make way for the wheelchair.

TheCountess, as others have pointed out, it would be actually very difficult for the company providing the accommodations to enforce, especially in the case of toilets, because of hidden disabilities. To make people prove or justify their need for a disabled toilet potentially violates their privacy and dignity.

I don't know what the answer is. There needs to be a certain amount of good faith that people won't abuse the facilities, but as this thread shows so many people have no idea how their actions impact the lives of people with disabilities.

It happened again today, I came out of the disabled loo (with baby in buggy) and another mum asked me to let her in. I unlocked it for her with my radar key. To refuse would be unkind and churlish. For all I know she could have been feeling sick/about to wet herself/having an IBS attack etc. She can't leave her baby unattended outside a cubicle. These toilets were in our shopping arcade where there is no accessible loo for those with prams. The baby changing room has no loo.

I'm a bit that people think I should say no! An accessible loo is an accessible loo

She probably thought you were just a mum with no disability who had bought a radar key so would let her in.

She could leave baby at cubicle door easily.

If it's locked and needs a RADaR key it is a disabled toilet.

Would you like it if you turned up in middle of an IBD attack and the toilet was occupied by a mum with a buggy?

Not sure how the wheelchair spots are set up in UK, but what I have seen here is seats that lift up and the straps are under them. The seats can be put down and used as regular seats when not needed for wheel chairs. If there were more seats that cd lift up and do double duty as needed , bus use might work out without this battle re who needs more.

As for disabled loo at work: A few months ago I had a nasty rash on my thighs and naughty bits, and I won't go TMI, but I had some ointment to use four times a day.

The cubicles in the men's loos were too narrow and I used the disabled loo. They are rarely used - there are I believe only two wheelers in the place and six disabled loos - but on one occasion as I left there was a lady in a wheelchair waiting.

She did not say a word; but then her eyes were on a level with my hands and I had the ointment in one of them, so perhaps she worked it out. In any event, I can't think I was wrong.

I was thinking of this thread today. DD had a hospital appointment and our city has recently had a fleet of new buses. I noticed both there and back that two ladies chose to sit in the wheelchair bit of the bus whilst on both occassions, the pram bays were completely empty. .
I made a point of reading the notice above the wheelchair space when I got off the bus coming home, it said that this space was designed for wheelchairs, that prams may use it, but should the space be needed they are required to move. Hopefully to the empty buggy spaces next to it!
I think this policy sounds fair but given drivers can't forcibly make some people shift I wonder how this scenario would play out?

mind surely if she needed to use the locked toilet because she was disabled she would have got a radar key

Crevasse if she had a medical condition that warranted it she'd have had her own radar key. I've used normal cubicles with a buggy in tow as I'm sure millions of others have WITHOUT abusing the availability of disabled toilets FOR THE DISABLED!

I used the end cubicle, door open but nobody could see anything buggy parked in doorway. Seen loads of women do this. Not ideal and agree there should be a large 'normal' cubicle for such purposes where possible. I also see no reason why baby changing tables shouldn't be in the main sink area as they are in many places and NOT in the disabled toilet. Not least because this puts considerate parents in a bloody awkward position

Showing, sorry but that is not a problem. He has two changing tables available to him, all he has to do us ask. Many of us are campaigning at the moment because we have to change our older children, teenagers and adult children with disabilities on toilet floors because the majority of places don't provide adult changing tables or hoists in the disabled toilets. We have one in our whole town. It makes days out practically impossible for some family's. That puts your problem into perspective hopefully.

The provision of facilities should really depend on balance of various competing needs.
If 1/1000 people need a disabled loo, you wouldn't put six disabled loos in a building and one for able bodied.

Having one cubicle as a shared space seems reasonable, baby changing and disabled, as long as the proportions between disabled and able bodied cubicles are correct and everyone goes into the appropriate one.

Having a larger cubicle for mums is a good idea, but it would be at the expense usually of the total number of toilets and one would have to be provided in the gents too.

Having to pass urine with the cubicle door open is unacceptable.

andrew stopping parents bringing unfolded prams onto buses may encourage other able bodied to use the buses - possibly, but I think the opposite is true, as bus companies know their market and ours advertise buggy friendly buses. We are struggling to keep a bus service here - once people stop using public transport it's very difficult to entice them back. I guess they need every fare, especially off peak.

No way would I get myself into a situation where I had to fold a pushchair on the bus - car all the way for me!