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On this page we will publish your letters. We will try to print every letter we receive. So, if you would like to share, be it advice, complaints or recommendations then write to us and tell the world. Acccess-ability reserves the right to re-use, shorten or modify any letter or material submitted.
Access for the Disabled in London
Car Design for All
Availablity of Non-Self-Service Petrol Stations
Access for the Disabled in London
by Anne, Maryland U.S.A
Recently I was fortunate enough to spend six days in London. Unfortunately, the ADA ended when I entered the airplane! It seems ironic that this site is originating in the United Kingdom. The foundation on which you are building is wonderful - I am mobility impaired and my son is low vision. We found it virtually impossible to access many things in London.
We were given tube passes for the week which went to waste; at most stations we were unable to get to the tube because there were very few lifts, only flights and flights of stairs. We had tickets for six theater productions - only one of the six was even partially handicapped accessible.
The first time I heard "Mind the Gap" I was astounded! I would loved to have experienced the marvels that I had heard about! We stayed at an absolutely gorgeous 4 star hotel. I do not know how a handicapped individual is supposed to shower or bath in UK - at least at that hotel!
My brother, who planned this entire trip and accompanied us on it, said this is true of all hotels in the UK.
There are ways to accommodate the handicapped without losing the charm. I hope the people of the UK demand some changes - this is so unfair!
by 'TRon'
The report on the 'Car Design for All' Conference published in the Disabled Motorists’ Federation magazine (’Flying Mat’ No. 74) is by far the most detailed and factual I’ve read about this important event. Most speakers seemed to have had their wheels on the ground, but his account of messrs Rattenbury and Gloyns’s contribution fills me with gloomy forebodings. They simply raked over the ground they covered at the Banstead Seminar on ‘Secondary Safety of Hand Controls’ in 1994, but on this latest occasion they seem to have ignored the economic implications altogether.
Perhaps Peter Gloyns has decided, on mature reflection, that his former idea of sharing the inflated cost of ‘safer’ adaptations equally between the state, the manufacturer and the user borders on the visionary. Compared with Dr. Gloyns, Screaming Lord Such is a hard-headed Yorkshire pragmatist.
It’s so easy for people in his position to dismiss cost as being of secondary importance to safety. He is neither footing the bill, nor is he exposed to the risks. My first passenger-carrying motor cost me (new) about £350. It cost a further £35 to have it fitted with cumbersome cable-operated vacuum powered adaptations so that I could drive it. Thirteen years later, when I was at last affluent enough to replace it, inflation had boosted its nearly identical successor (also new) to over £3,000 but the hand controls, of the (then new) trusty all-mechanical variety, cost only £60.
In simple terms, adaptation represented 10% of the capital cost of my first motor but less than 2% of my second. Each set of adaptations did exactly the same job, yet the simplification of their design & fitment over the intervening years reduced the cost-of-disabled-living premium by 80%. At a conservative estimate, with allowances for inflation and interest, my minimalist adaptations have saved me around £12,000 over an independent motoring life of 36 years. People have received less for the loss of both legs in accidents.
Doctors Rattenbury & Gloyns, and all who are tempted to follow their lead, need a compulsory course in cost benefit analysis, such as only disabled living can provide.
Yours &etc., 'TRon'
Availablity of Non-Self-Service Petrol Stations
by Ron Salt (TRon)
In February '94, Dame Ann Frye convened a meeting of DD organisations and the principal filling-station chain operators at the DoT's old office in Marsham Street. The result was a Voluntary Code of Conduct - written by the DoT's Disability Unit, in consultation with the driver organisations and the fuel retailers - which in retrospect appears to have done little or nothing to improve the lot of people who can't get out of their cars and serve themselves at automated stations.
The organisation I serve was not sanguine about the prospects of Dame Ann's voluntary code. It decided a little self-help was in order and sent out some 50,000 questionnaires to disabled drivers asking them where they *knew* they could be sure of service at the pumps. We got about 4,000 back. From them we were able to construct a database of about 1,100 stations in the UK where forecourt service was the norm. (The Nuffield Foundation, Disability Now, the DDA, DDMC, MS and MD Group picked up the tab for this costly exercise).
Using GIS software donated by NextBase and with the help of a substantial grant from the Nuffield foundation to buy computers, we set up a telephone service. Callers tell us where they live & we do a map search of up to 10 miles round their postcode for non-self-service stations. We also plan cross-country routes & produce map-sheets with the stations on, or fairly near, to the roads they will traverse, plotted thereupon.
The service, which we call RAMP (Routeplanning & Access Map Printing)has expanded beyond the original purpose, but we still get anguished calls from inexperienced disabled drivers who have discovered they are unwelcome at filling stations if they arrive alone. The classic of all time was from a lady in London who said she had been supplied with a Motability car, she'd had it a fortnight and the tank was half empty - where could she find a garage that would put more petrol in
for her before it ran dry?
As time has gone by we have learned of a few helpful filling stations missed by the 1994 survey. In the last 12 months, however, we have been told of numerous closures, and conversions to self-service and single manning (which is the *real* problem & created by cost-cutting managers). But worse yet, many service garages are ceasing to sell fuel because they can't compete on price. Service garages are seldom on main through routes but they have always been the likliest places to get help at the pumps because there is usually a mechanic around the place who can be summoned on the tannoy or whatever to do the job.
We knew this fact when we set up RAMP. The unique value of our system is that we can direct travellers to these back-street garages which, if they are strangers to the district, they would otherwise never see. Now *they* are giving up on fuel sales the plight of disabled drivers is likely to become an issue again - real soon!
It has become a matter of urgency to update our database. Every disabled driver can help. I can fax maps and lists of nearby stations turned up by our 1994 survey to anyone willing to get in their car & do a little wheel-work - all I need to know is their home post-code. RAMP runs on a shoe-string; everybody is a volunteer but the overheads still absorb all the funds we get from donations and fees. Right now we haven't got enough cash to post questionnaires to the 1,059 filling stations still on our lists.
Sincerely,
Ron Salt (TRon)
DMF RAMP Co-ordinator/Systems manager.
13 July 1997