Jonathan Kay on the social indignity of riding the bus in a wheelchair
| Since my wife got a new job that requires her to commute by car, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the bus. I kind of like it: The 45-minute ride to and from work gives me a chance to zone out and listen to my daily news podcasts. Plus, every once in a while, you see something interesting on the bus. Like today. I was on one of those new Toronto busses that crouch down to hoist wheelchair-bound passengers into the entrance, with a wide central corridor, and a special bank of seats in front that flips up to permit a disabled person to strap in. It is all designed with the best of intentions. But too often, the actual experience of bringing a disabled person onto the bus turns into a mortifying vignette for all concerned. The problem is that the procedure for boarding a wheelchair passenger is long and laborious. It take a few minutes — an eternity for a bus-full of passengers anxious about getting to work on time. The other problem is that the process requires that the people sitting on the opposite row of seats have to get up and temporarily move. (The space taken up by their legs is needed so that the wheelchair-bound person can execute the five-point parking procedure.) This can be cumbersome, or even impossible, when the bus is crowded. An episode that I witnessed today was especially awkward because one of the passengers sitting in the opposite bank of seats was a middle-aged Muslim woman in headscarf who didn’t seem to understand the order to move being (somewhat curtly) barked out by the disabled passenger. The woman sitting next to her was also older, and burdened with an assortment of packages. She displaced herself only with considerable exertion. The whole episode seemed to go on forever, with the rest of us pretending not to be annoyed as the bus sat idling at the corner of Don Mills Road and The Donway. When the disabled passenger — a scowling 20-something woman — was finally seated, she muttered audibly about how slow and inconsiderate the two facing women had been. This in turn set the lady with the boxes into her own spasm of defensive muttering. It was all very mortifying for the rest of us. Our annoyance was mixed with pity for this poor disabled person — who no doubt felt awful about having to inconvenience strangers thusly every day, and so masked her insecurity with prickly standoffishness. “There but for the grace of God,” and so forth. Cities like Toronto spend a great deal of money to accommodate the special needs of the disabled — and rightly so. But the idea that all of these expenditures will restore the disabled to the dignity and convenience the rest of us take for granted is false. Like it or not, we live in a society whose physical infrastructure — not to mention the habits and expectations of its inhabitants — are based on the assumption of full mobility. The billions we spend on accessibility do help handicapped people get around. But they cannot erase the feeling, which must be one of the worst and most unfair aspects of being disabled, that you are inconveniencing others and being judged by them in the process. The idea that money doesn’t buy happiness is generally true. But I think an exception has to be carved out not only for the very poor, but also the disabled. If you are disabled, money at least buys you the freedom from social anxiety that comes from controlling your own environment — living in a fully-outfitted home instead of jockeying for the elevator in an apartment building, having your groceries delivered instead of trudging out to get them — and riding in your own van instead of a bus full of judgmental onlookers. |
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