Bus companies are not required by law to force parents with buggies to make way for wheelchair users

[DuelingFanjo]

story

First Bus wins wheelchair court judgement - Bus companies are not required by law to force parents with buggies to make way for wheelchair users in designated bays on vehicles, senior judges ruled.

Might be a controversial opinion but I am glad.

Fanjo - quite the opposite. Wheelchair users do need the space, I'm just saying that sometimes practicalities dictate someone can't fold their buggy, it doesn't mean they don't wish they could.

Rubbish Georgie, and you know it!

What's rubbish??

It's worry that too, Babie. I, also, worry that there will be people heading towards the bus stop/station with their pram and notice a person with a wheelchair or SN buggy. I worry that they will deliberately speed up to get past them so they are at the bus stop first, refuse to fold and make the wheelchair user wait for the next bus.

Yes, after reading these threads on MN for 7 years, I really do believe people will do that.

TheFairy I can imagine that too, because some people are just twats of the highest order.

Yes, all those entitled poor people sitting there thinking "If only the baby wasn't asleep/I hadn't got so much shopping/its cold outside/I hadn't bought a really big pushchair I can't work/I hadn't just had my hair done/I've got car trouble/why does this sort of thing have to happen to me ...I would make way, really I would - only I'm not going to because I can't be arsed."

I think what we are forgetting here is the number of entitled people who are going to feel momentarily embarrassed by having their selfishness exposed to a busload of strangers. Won't somebody think of them?

If it brings any comfort, I regularly see people getting off the tram or squeezing down like sardines in order to make space for someone in a wheelchair (and sometimes with a buggy) to get into the designated space here. And that's a peak commuter time. People just do it because that's what the space is for, and if they are standing in that space then they accept (or at least enough people accept, which pressures other people into doing the same) that they need to move and make room.

wow I left this thread yesterday.
see it is still the same, the same person on a wind up.
i do wish people would realise that a wheelchair is someones legs.
it can not be compared to a pram/buggy that someone has chosen.

I couldn't fold when DD was young as she had low tone and I had back problems. I got off the bus if someone in wheelchair needed space

Barbie that's good news but I worry for people trying to board en route with no depot manager for back up. The more I think about this, the more I think tht a change in the law is the only way to go.

No fanjo I didn't say that. I said I agree buggy users should fold/make room for wheelchair users in my first post and then said not all people can practice folding their buggy's and that I can't fold mine one handed after someone implied it was that easy. And as for buying another pram no I can't afford it. But thank you for the dig.

Any time auntie Maggie. Try freecycle if you are really wanting a folding buggy rather than refusing.

Or ask for help as someone said.

I'm not going to have loads of sympathy for you if you bought a buggy that couldn't be folded. Didn't make digs though.

Ad I said. I couldn't fold. I got off.

Have sympathy for people being poor and not being able to afford new buggy..

Not for people who use that as an excuse not to fold their big prams or get off though.

Hth. And no I don't use a wheelchair and nor does my DD.

When mine got slightly older I bought a mega basic umbrella fold one from an NCT sale. I think it was £2. It was pretty rubbish and I wouldn't have wanted them in it for long, but it did for trips where we didn't have time to risk not getting the bus. I see similar in charity shops quite often.

I genuinely can't understand why anyone with a buggy would not move for a wheelchair, but then I don't understand the entitled behaviour of many people, including the lady who parks on the zigzags outside our school gate every day, despite there usually being 'legal' space 100m away.

My hope is that this judgement will be used to either clarify existing law or create a new one so that the bus drivers have legal back-up to tell non-movers to sling their hook!

would be people who physically can't, are struggling with their children, have twins, have a buggy that doesn't fold and are unexpectedly on the bus...

I know you wouldn't hand your babies over to strangers, but that is exactly what happened when a mum got on the bus with twins in a double, she couldn't fit her buggy on with ds in his buggy and so I held the babies, whist she folded and pushed the buggy behind ds's, she then sat with the babies on her lap. I have also asked people to help fold a (fecking) Phil&Teds.

No things aren't always black and white, but if this lady hadn't been happy to fold, then we would not have been able to get on the bus at all, fortunately she was, and we were all able to help each other and get to our destination.

Being poor is no excuse to break the rules. What if you couldn't afford a hands free mobile. Do you get the right to drive holding one to your ear? Do you get to help yourself to food that belongs to other people, particularly those people who already have less than they need?

No you do not. Being poor is unfortunate but it still comes with choices about priorities. No-one's priority should be to put themselves before the needs of a wheelchair user to access the wheelchair space.

I don't know what people are supposed to do as an alternative to their rare and hypothetical problems that lead them to feel so entitled and I don't care. They are TEMPORARY discomforts and have a range of solutions that are THEIR responsibility to resolve. Just pretend buses don't have space and use that as your baseline and starting point for solving your problems. Anything else is a bonus.

I can see this going to the Supreme Court and think it should.

And when it does it is entirely possible that rather than police disagreements, bus companies will simply refuse buggies at all, which will be terrible but quite understandable.

BeCool... I know the situation is farcical, people should just do the right thing, but what ruling/law would you expect to be passed?

Much as I would expect everyone to move themselves from a disabled space when requested I don't see how that law would be framed. Disabled car spaces have parking bods, what do wheelchair spaces have? A driver who has other things to do as his primary concern - the judge summed all of that up well, I thought.

I cannot see how a law could be worded that would make it enforceable... and no law should be passed unless it is enforceable (that is in itself a law). This is a civil matter, just as disabled parking bays are, and is dealt with by the bus company as they see fit, just as every council decides how to deal with disabled parking bays abuse.