WHBU ? (Wheelchair vs. Buggy)

[DisabilityIsALifestyleChoice]

(NC'd but old hand here)

DH tends to chat in various discussion groups, and yesterday, in a discussion about roads told someone to fuck off.

Here's the conversation which started around using buses and how everyone should do it to relieve road congestion,

DH:
And wheelchair users can wait all day, and still not get a bus if there are people refusing to move their baby buggies.

POSTER:
What are parents to do if they have a child in a buggy, some shopping
underneath, so it cannot be folded and cannot relinquish their position and get a later bus, because they have to be at school for a particular time to pick up their 5 year-old child?

DH:
That's choice, compared to the necessity to use a wheelchair.

POSTER:
It's not choice if you have to do the shopping so as to have an evening meal, have a young child that you have to bring with you and need to pick up the other child from school. The wheelchair user may well have much more choice, as many can walk short distances and chairs
can fold. In some cases, their journey may be purely frivolous, unlike the example parent.

It was at this point DH suggested the poster "Go f* themselves".

I should add that obviously DH is sensitive to wheelchair users (which is what I am) and tries to be polite where he can (as befits his age, and maturity). But he's fretting now whether he was too abrupt .

I wonder what the vipers of AIBU think ? (For the record, I am 100% on his side, here ...)

I’m sure I say this every time, but the average buggy user will very rarely (if ever) need to move for a wheelchair. Not worth getting twisted pants over. However, bus companies should always provide free onwards travel if you have to leave the bus. Not everyone could afford to pay for another ticket.

Also, please remember that pushchairs can also be used as wheelchairs by some children. Don’t be dickish about them either. They have equal priority to a wheelchair. (There is a mum I see fairly often who has a child of six or seven in a pushchair. He can no more sit on a seat than the average wheelchair user can.)

Nada, I'm not sure that posts is any less offensive.

Have you not considered the reason some disabled people are aggressive is because they're having to fight for the space on a bus that legally is theirs against entitled twats of parents who are too stupid to know the law and/ or to understand how to fold their buggies and get out of the way. Arguably anyone that dumb shouldn't procreate otherwise in 50 years Idiocracy will be a reality.

I said what I would do. Not what others should do.

How is repeating your assertion Nada, one that was deleted for being disablist, helping matters. You don't like what I've got to say, fair enough, you disagree with what I say, fair enough, doesn't give you the right to continue making disablist remarks. We know you don't think it is, but I'm not the lone voice here...

I don't always have my son with me on the bus, juggling 2 non walking children and a child with limited mobility plus folding a heavy double pram would prove impossible. My daughter is classed as disabled so would be interesting to find out what her rights would be in this situation. She may very well end up needing a wheelchair herself in future.

Surely the older child is sat on a chair though? So in that scenario I don’t think the disability is that relevant?

If your child becomes a wheelchair user then you will sadly probably soon realise just how many challenges there are in day to day life.

Tbf to DemiRose87 though rmtmeven if the 3 yo will sit nicely on the chair alone, that still leaves her with a 2 yo and a newborn to hold whilst putting down the buggy. The 2 yo may also sit nicely so she van hold the newborn and collapse it one handed (!) but that all assumes there's seats or someone willing to help. Irrespective at this point whether its tough luck she has to move or not, it doesn't take much to figure out its not as easy as everyone makes out. Especially with an impatient driver and rutting bus folk and potentially a wheelchair user who is trying to manouver into place and then potentially a bus moving. There just needs to be more mixed seating

My dads been in a wheelchair 7 years and he has never got on the bus. Here you get discounts on black cabs if your disabled. So he pays very little to use them and he uses his dla to pay. Not hard really is it.
It's £45.00 to get from here to the nearest city in a converted cab. It's £15.00 to get to the nearest town. That's hard. That's expensive if you need to do it for work, five days a week? At the cheaper end of the spectrum that would be £150.00 per week.
Cabs to the nearest hospital, 25 miles away, £65.00 round trip. We don't all live in London.

SleepingStandingUp thank you. I dread getting on a bus sometimes in case this kind of thing happens and my pram is very large and heavy as it was the only one suitable for all my children's needs and it weighs a tonne. My elder daughter does sit on a seat, but she does struggle and tires easily and suffers with pain so it would be preferable if we weren't all made to get off and wait for the next bus. She does use a disability pram similar to the Maclaren Major for longer journeys but I am unable to use that when I'm pushing my younger two.

The point is, Misspolly, that your statement of what you would do is not inherently credible. If you are in a wheelchair with no access to a car or taxi, are you seriously saying you would never ever access a bus even if that were the only way to get to that essential medical appointment?

MisspollyhadadoIIy that assuming you still live in that area in X years and they are till financing the scheme. If you wouldn't use a bus, preferring to quit work and moss medical appointments if you can afford a taxi, because you don't want to be a nuisance, it implies you see wheelchair users on buses as nuisances too. So what would you siugges the vast majority of wheelchair users who can't/dont have a car do?
Round here wheelchair accessible tqci's are more expensive generally. IV had to use them when it was too late / awkward to get somewhere by is and I had DS in his buggy. It's easier but I wouldn't fancy it for the two buses each way into the next city along we do half a dozen times a year for apppintments

Addicted, that's a rotten position to be in. I know it's hard, I had twins and a 19 month old, one of whom is a wheelchair user. The bus would accept that the Maclaren Major that we used was wheelchair equivalent. Go ahead and use it, you have as much right to, when with your daughter, as anyone else.

Some people are missing the point that if it wasn't for wheelchair users, there wouldn't be a space suitable for buggies on the bus at all and you buggy using people would have to fold your buggy every single time!

It would be easier if there was a blanket rule saying 'no unfolded buggies' and then the wheelchair user would not be such an inconvenience. An exception could be made for those parents with hidden disabilities perhaps (as long as they still move if a wheelchair user gets on)

I have given up trying to get a paediatric wheelchair on a bus. We had to wait over 90 mins for a 2 mile journey once as we couldn't get on 6 buses. Hopefully they will take your DH comments on board.

My son has mobility issues and we were once asked to fold his chair so a pushchair with a 4 year old in it could 'share' the space. I asked if they had any issues and they didn't so I refused as that was the third bus we had waited for. Unless they are pregnant/newborn or a special needs buggy or regular with issues then I'm the mean one to not fold the wheelchair.

Way I see it, my son can travel in 1 space on the bus, and as a parent of a wheelchair user we expect to be able to park his chair in there. Saddens me that people think we take it out for fun, no it's taken out of necessity. Sorry, I agree with your husband. Some parents should try walking a mile in our shoes. School run times are the worst, they refuse because of the school run and stare as if to say 'he can't walk so doesn't need an education'.

I allways wounder about the wording in the court rulling stating that it's disabled person versus non disabled.

Like many my disabilities became much worse after pregnancy and i had to use a buggy instead of a walker. I couldn't have physically managed to colapse our double or hold either twin while standing at that stage (both of whom are disabled as they were prem).

When i used a wheelchair i found people didn't question my need. A walker or a stick prouduces begrudging sneers. But as a disabled woman who dared to have children i felt treated like dirt by the public. The eye rolls as moving takes me time before i could manage to vacate the wheelchair space or the outrage from the pram user if i politely explain mine and my children's disability needs and ask if they would mind folding their buggy to let me have the space so i can move out of the wheelchair users way. Being refused access to disabled toilets 'because you're not disabled' and abuse if i use one's open to all (i have continence and mobility problems and my dc are disabled). I've been hit with peoples sticks, spat on, verbally abused. But i was probably at my most dis-able to access life at that point. Since i have been lucky enough to build up strength and find better treatments i am generally fine without aids but if i ask for help now or access disabled toilets now i don't find the same disgust and outrage i did when my first two were young.

It's maybe an area thing as my recolection of my most recent pregnancy/new born stage isn't as extreem or it's maybe my perception as we lost of our girls triplet at birth so i was very low then anyways but it allways felt as if i was being judged for daring to parent whilst being disabled, but not 'disabled enough', as if a disabled woman wanting what others have is selfish or maybe it's disabled sex that's frowned on. But that's the impression i got and i allways wounder why the judgement automaticly assumes the other person isn't disabled (implied by the wording). It's like those of us with invisable disabilities are just deemed to need to be permenantly invisable. And i don't think it's uncommon for mum's disabilities to worsen during pregnancy and after. Sure it's not necessarily forever but plenty must return to using a walker or stick or chair after the buggy stage. That it's automaticly assumed to just be a tempory stage makes us and our needs more invisable and less able. Ofcourse this is transport companies fault (and society/government) but the court judgement and the assumption the other is non disabled just appears to illustrate that.

It would be easier if there was a blanket rule saying 'no unfolded buggies'
So how do you propose the mom with a newborn, 2 yo and 3 yo gets any art of distance? Given 3 o's mobility issues and the ages of the other too. Its fine saying walk but if they're doing 2 or 3 bus changes from one city to the next?

My 2 yo is on o2and peg fed. Normally on feed on bus so we get space or we wait. I can't physically hold him, o2 and feed bag whilst carrying spare o2 cylinder and his bags and collapsing the pushchair. No one wants to hold a 2 yo with tubes attached. But by your logic I'll just skip all his hospital appointments an hour away by 2 buses because irrespective of the face that I move, I'm only a mom with a baby so idont rate as important as everyone else on the bus.

Oh and SOME teenagers smoke on the bus so lets ban all of those and some men speed their legs and take up space so lets ban them and some ladies push to the front so lets ban them.

No, because we can't brush everyone else with the same brush can we. Just parwbts with prams because we're all ignorant scum.

You think I don't get stared at enough on the bus? Have enough comments made about my beautiful baby and what must be "wrong" with him without me having to show the bus driver aa special card to say I can travel and then having even the people who cat see my son tutting and gossiping about what must be wrong with him to be allowed on the bus?

FuckShitJackFairy I totally understand this, and thank you for posting it.

Sleeping- it's really not all parents though is it, for the most part it's women. It's women's needs, and the litteral result of us having sex, that is too inconvienent to give any space on a bus too. A man on a bus folding a buggy would likely have numerous people(women?) Falling over themselves to help the poor helpless but heroic daddy giving mum a break. Even though he wont have just given birth/suffering pgp/has much greater strength anyways.

@FuckShitJackFairy You're just speculating though aren't you. I can't see why people would fall over themselves to help a father but not a mother.

You're very short sighted then

I’ve just borrowed this pic from a Facebook group I’m in

It’s today on a bus in London so the wheelchair user needs to use the back doors and the wheelchair space is directly opposite the doors. The driver let her on but everyone refused to move out of the way so she had to sit in the doorway in her wheelchair which is extremely dangerous. She could not wait for another bus as she had a train to catch

wtf isn't that luggage in the space?! I would have moved it for her personally, wouldn't care who it belonged to. Some people are unbelievable

@FuckShitJackFairy I suspect you're right, my hubby gets much more appreciation for caring for our son than I do because he's a man and we expect less of them. I don't, I expect him to do the same haha

@fuckshitjackfairy My husband had to travel with dd on the bus for the first six months. Wheelchair spaces were a new thing and majority of buses didn’t have them yet, outward journey was quiet and mainly full of local people, but the return one was often very busy with different people every day, he lost count of the amount of times women would rush over and offer to hold baby and fold buggy for him and then sit with him in bus and chat about what a brilliant dad he is

He said he knows they are being friendly and trying to help but that it’s kind of insulting having someone be surprised that he knows how to fold a buggy look after his child, and implying it makes him a great parent or that he is ‘babysitting”. A few times he’d say it doesn’t make him great, that looking after a child is the basics and parents do it all the time, but it sometimes caused offence.

I agree it's insultong to men too, but it actively disadvantages women which is worse