Disabled Drivers Free Road Tax and Parking

September 1, 201213 yr

Firstly let me apologise for my little outburst last night/this morning but the thread about disabled drivers last night got me a bit hot under the collar. I am sorry if I offended anyone at all, that was not my intention.

I would however like to put something straight, a disabled wheelchair user can have a bog standard wheelchair free in most cases from the NHS (really really heavy). However if you require something that is a bit of a specialist wheelchair for the lightness, seating positions, specialst cushions, foldability say for the boot of a Zed etc etc they have to pay for their own. My particular wheelchair cost me (yes I had to pay for it) £3,500, (my Zed didn't cost that). I have to change it every 5 years, so it costs me £3,500 + however much they have hiked the price up (and believe me, mention disability and the price trebles). Therefore my next wheelchair will probably be more like £4,000. So road tax and the odd free parking space doesn't come near to my personal outlay of thousands of pounds.

My offer still stands, I have a spare wheelchair here, if any brave person would like to use it for one month, then come back here and state what the experience was like, please get in touch.

The first thing you will notice is that 99.9% of your friends houses will not be accessible via a wheelchair, and even if you can manage to get into the house, most properties have the bathroom upstairs, so unless you want to make a mess of that new carpet your mate has just had laid, you have to make your apologies and leave.

The second thing you will notice is that at least 50% of pubs/restraunts, cafe's, shopping centres even though the Disability Discrimination Act of 1989 1995 and 1998 (DDA) stated that any business offering their services to an able bodied person must make reasonable adjustment in order to offer the same service to a disabled person.......lol, don't make me laugh, most don't even have accessible toilets.

Has anyone ever tried telephoning a caravan site and enquire if they have any disabled accessible caravans to hire for a holiday, the ones that do have them have a maximum of three, but most don't even know what you are on about.

Please take the time to look around you for the next month, and see just how many things you see that a disabled person in a wheelchair could not do, or would have extreme difficulty doing. It doesn't really strike able bodied people until they themselves find themselves in the situation of being in a wheelchair, hence the offer of a month's loan of one, £3,500 quid if you break it though (lol, just messing). Anyone going to JAE can use my wheelchair and take themselves off to the accessible toilets, I will guarantee that you would not make it on your own. (This is in no way slagging the JAE venue or organisers off, but a wheelchair user could not make it to the accessible toilets by themselves from where the 300zx stand is).

It is such a pitty that wheelchair handball is not yet an olympic sport, that is the sport I play (so I have to have a sport wheelchair that wont tip, watch some of the para-olympic games and you will see the chairs I mean) the cheapest of the cheap sports wheelchair costs £1,000, and they can only be used for sports, they would never go over the bumps and cracks in the pavements as they have very small wheels at the front.These chairs go from the £1,000 to many thousands of pounds, another outlay if a wheelchair user wants to play sports.

I could go on all night, but I think this may help some understand that disabled people do not just get everything handed out to them on a plate, and have to fight for a lot of things to change the present mentality of some. I am an ex paramedic as most of you will know, even from going into a wheelchair from that career was eye opening, even as a paramedic you do not realise just how tough it is for wheelchair users.

Cheers

Ian

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