To think it's common sense to let a w/c user have the w/c spot

[SparkyStar84]

I've just seen the ruling on disabled people getting priority in disabled spots on buses. Isn't that common sense. What kind of person would deny a w/c user the space because 'pushchair'?
I'm a w/c user it makes it easier in a way to get about with children, though I know some w/c users still have a buggy.
This is about the parents who refuse to move, when asked, by someone who might have an appt or something important to get too. Not saying the parent doesn't. But isn't that the point of foldable buggies over great big travel systems?
It just bugs me that people have had to leave the bus because a parent wouldn't move. As a parent with kids of many ages, also remembering times gone by, the purpose of easy foldable buggies is that you can decamp when on the bus.
Do you think it's an issue that buses need to provide buggy spaces too?

But you have to see that the one thing that is bringing the ban closer is the number of mothers vociferously claiming that they cannot possibly be expected to vacate a wheelchair space if it is needed by a wheelchair user

This!

Fuck me, it's a hard of thinking party. Wheelchair space.
Wheelchair space. Wheelchair space. ad fucking infinitum.

MUMSNET, SORT OUT THESE DISABLIST TWATS!

Completely agree with ExPat

No folding buggy no bus access.

If you travel regularly by public transport you should buy a suitable buggy. As I said upthread my double buggy folded and I managed.

No body should be allowed to use empty disabled spaces outside shops unless they have a permit. They should do the same on buses because entitled twats have no filter and some won't move.

I will say I do disagree with the blanket ban and I do agree that if the wheelchair bay isn't needed that a pram can and should park there.

But that's as far as it goes. If at anytime during the journey it's needed by a wheelchair, then you vacate the space.

Could be lucky like around here where I've only ever seen two different people use a wheelchair on a bus and it's extremely rare or ornaments could be somewhere where it's more common

Exactly cory

If a ban is introduced it will only be people like trifle to blame for it.

It is quite rare to see a wheelchair on the Bus. Certainly not 1 in 60 ( I read there is a million wheelchair users).

We saw a wheelchair on the bus regularly - of course my ds was sitting in that wheelchair.

Infact it's quite rare to see a wheelchair user ( especially a solo wheelchair user) anywhere. Electric scooters are quite common on the street's but not really on busses.

I see wheelchairs regularly in London. Quite rare anywhere? Hardly.

Thank you Cory,

No one is saying ban anything, I don't think it will come to that. All that would be nice is for people to help fellow disabled persons if possible.

You think going out with children is hard, try being disabled and having to factor in meds and other stuff needed to exist / make life easier. Then add in children to the bargain you've got fun fun times.

But for a disabled person, particularly w/c users, it's hard to even motivate yourself to leave the house, multiple issues, multiple what ifs.

Having children isn't easy, I don't think it was designed as an easy task. PND, post section, SPD, on top, all very nasty.

No one wishes to be isolated, in an ideal world there'd be adequate space for both. Opposite sides of the bus with fold down chairs.

They are rare here Ginger

I could travel twice a day for two weeks and not see one wheelchair.

Then all of a sudden one will appear.

But I realise this is unusual rather than the norm

It seems to me that on here the vast majority of people aren't completely thick and can see that wheelchair users obviously take priority as there is NO ALTERNATIVE option, it's not a case of them not really fancying the alternative.

I would like to hope that in real life idiots are such a small minority, sadly I think they're probably more prevalent.

To me, it's obvious that when you buy a pram you research beforehand, you don't buy a monster all singing and dancing travel system if you have a tiny Micra and that's your primary mode of transport. So, why, if you know you use buses, would you not think 'ah, that one isn't suitable as it would be a right pain collapsing/getting off the bus if a wheelchair user needs THEIR space'? Or, you buy the wrong thing and think 'Oh bollocks, what an idiot I am, I'd better stick this one on e-bay and get a different one, this won't work for me'

Unless I've missed something, wheelchair users don't have an option to purchase a more convenient wheelchair? Perhaps one that comes with an 'able bodied' button?

Expat; well of course we all survived. Doesn't make having a shit attitude to new mothers acceptable. A lot of you older mothers remember your early motherhood with rose tinted glasses about how perfect you were. In the old days mothers had to fold buggies up, which is pretty crap to be honest. But in the old days a lot of other things were acceptable (raping your wife, sacking a woman for getting pregnant) doesn't mean that they were right. So yes, I really do think there should be spaces for prams and buggies on buses. But no, not at the expense of wheelchair users.

I really hope your not actually a teacher trifle, your attitude is disgusting and so incredibly selfish.

Cory i have asked people on buses and trains to help with my buggy and they just pretend they can't hear me and look away, it's the same face people on the tube make when i am pregnant and they don't want to stand up. I once asked people to help me with the buggy and some raced in front and i thought they were rushing to my aid and i said 'oh thanks' and they actually were just pushing in front to get on before me in case i slowed them down

I've had to go to extra stops on a train to where the train is level with the platform because i couldn't get help getting off.

You sound like you live in friendlier places than me!

Parts of this thread make me really sad. Whatever happened to people just being kind to each other instead of banging on about their entitlements ?
A few years ago I flew alone from Stanstead to Bordeaux on a cheap flight. When I was getting off I noticed a mother with a smallish baby, two toddlers and a pushchair and asked if I could help. She smiled nicely and we got off the plane together, dividing kids and buggy between us. I said that I thought she was brave travelling alone with three small children and she said, "It's not difficult, there's always someone kind who offers to help me." I left the airport feeling very happy. Something of that sort might increase the sum of human happiness rather than being horrible to disabled people.

trifle

I am not suggesting you have a problem with people with disabilities, but disablism is more subtle than that. People with disabilities are at an inherent disadvantage, in the case of a wheelchair user because they cannot walk due to their physical disability.

For that reason, it is discrimination against a person with a disability not to make a reasonable adjustment to remove that disadvantage. In other words, disablism isn't just about not having a problem with disabled people or not being mean to them, it's about failing to take reasonable steps to remove the disadvantage that they are at as compared with someone without that disability.

The fact that you have a new baby like billions of women before you does not put you at a disadvantage in society. I'm sorry, but it doesn't. You cannot compare having a baby to having to use a wheelchair to get around. The comparison is insulting. Their need is infinitely greater than yours.

And even though it sounds great to say a wheelchair user will have priority, read kitkats earlier posts. Even with that priority, and even if it is respected by parents onboard, wheelchair users are often treated as a burden in a way which you with your child cannot even begin to imagine.

I know you've taken a lot of flack on here, not least from me, so I've tried to calmly set out why I say you're enabling disability discrimination. Please don't get defensive, please think about it, and please no matter what do not think your "need" for the wheelchair space is anything like as great as the wheelchair users. Please give it up in future.

The trouble is though sournrique people like trifle once ensconced I. The disabled bay with her snowflake wouldn't move and although the judgment today is helpful it stops at a driver having the absolute power to make her or eject her from the bus.

Unless they get that power people like trifle will carry on with their disablist attitudes and behaviour.

Only legislation changes attitudes in the end.

Its more likely rarer to see a wheelchair user on a bus because its so much faff for them they avoid it as much as possible.

I hope it's just post natal hormones and those with negative views realise what they've said. It might not be necessarily them that may need a wheelchair, but a loved one, maybe then they'd understand.

mrsK honestly that's strange because in all my years as a parent No one has ever refused to help me if asked and I have lived in London. People always help hump the buggy up the tube steps. Usually another woman.

No one wishes to be isolated, in an ideal world there'd be adequate space for both. Opposite sides of the bus with fold down chairs.

That's what they had in Canada. Once i got on and a w/c user was on the buggy side but the w/c side was free and the driver made the w/c user move over. Even tho i was happy to swap sides for one ride. But no. Rules are rules.

London underground is usually okay. But the route i used to do from Sevenoaks to Kew was a misery. I wanted to get off at Kew but the drop is massive so i used to have to walk back from Brentford. And people in Sevenoaks were not very child friendly! In their defence my buggy is massive and heavy and with 2 large dc in and overnight bags etc lots probably thought it might give them a hernia.

It is quite rare to see a wheelchair on the Bus

I'm a very regular bus user, in my smallish town and in several very big nearby cities. I rarely see wheelchair users either - but I assume that's because it's so bloody damn hard to get about on public transport by wheelchair.

Although I do remember one incident (seared in my memory actually) of a crowded bus in a large city. Pouiring rain. THree parents with unfolded buggies at the front of a double-decker (incidentally making itr really hard for anyone else to gwet past them.

Pull up at a stop, intending passengers queued up, including a man in a wheelchair. The bus driver simply told him that he couldn't get on. The women with prams jeered & laughed.

It was so exceptionally nasty - that poor guy stuck at an unsheltered stop, in the pouring rain. And anyone who commented to the parents at the front was threatened with abusive language. It was a low point in my daily commuting in that city.

And what I should have added, is that I imagine that experiences like the one I saw - entitled parents completely (and nastily) unprepared to move or fold. Man stuck in pouring rain.

I expect that next time, he went without something else in order to afford a taxi.