Wheelchairs can't fold as prams can
I'M the wheelchair user who had to board the bus on that day, Mums on way to pick up kids from school 'chucked off' city bus, Points of view, November 12, and I'm very sorry if the driver didn't say to the ladies they could fold their buggies as I would have let them store the buggies by my feet if I could have.
I have had a long, hard fight to get to use the wheelchair space as it should be.
At times, I have had to wait for up to three-and-a-half hours to get home in the rain with hardly any battery charge on my chair because of buggies which could have been folded, with drivers asking me if I could fold my electric wheelchair or mothers telling me to get out and walk.
If I could fold it I would, or if I could get out and walk, I would but I can't. Sorry.
It's possible to fold a buggy but not a wheelchair, as I have found out in the last few years.
I have not always been a wheelchair user but have always had respect for them.
Paul Thomas
Summerway, Exeter
(via thisisexeter.co.uk)











Comments
by J Brooks, Devon
Friday, November 21 2008, 2:20PM
“Surely it is just common sense for any mother to fold up her child's buggy when going onto a bus which is a confined small space. The child would then sit on the mother's lap, safe and out of the way of other passengers. There were other passengers on the bus weren't there?”