Disabled riders complain that they're routinely
ignored, insulted, and endangered by AC Transit bus drivers.
By Katy St. Clair | April 7, 2004 | East Bay Express | Emeryville, CA
One afternoon last June, Oakland wheelchair user
Oliver Freed got on AC Transit's 43 line in Berkeley and took his place in the
disabled seating area. Freed was careful to thank the driver for letting him
board. That way, if the s**t hit the fan later, no one could accuse him of being
a troublemaker. After all, he knew something the driver didn't know -- that
their entire interaction was being secretly recorded on videotape.
Freed was wearing a baseball hat rigged with a
spycam, purchased at a San Francisco detective store. He was on the lookout for
disability-related violations of AC Transit policy, such as when a driver
improperly secures his wheelchair, neglects to ask ahead of time where he will
be getting off, or doesn't call out the stops for passengers with poor or no
vision. His hat was ready to record whatever happened.
The resulting tape is fuzzy, but its squiggly
black-and-white images clearly show the driver moving toward Freed and putting
one of the bus' shoulder belts across him. That's when she made her first
mistake. The driver disregarded the four wall-mounted straps that are supposed
to be used to anchor any wheelchair to the floor. As she returned to her seat,
and Freed discovered that he was not secure, he called out, as if in pain,
"Driver! You haven't secured me yet. Driver! The wheelchair is not secured yet!"
The driver calmly returned and tried to anchor
Freed according to AC Transit's official protocol. She yanked a bit at the
straps, then claimed that they weren't working, saying she couldn't pull them
out from the wall.
"Okay," Freed said loudly into his hat's
microphone. "Driver 31860's completely refused to put on securement system. ...
If I slide out into the aisle and hit some child it'll be your fault, like I
almost hit this lady here. ... Driver, I'd like you to come back and secure me
correctly, please."
Freed has been in roughly this same situation on
many an AC Transit bus. Depending upon which videotaped encounter one watches,
sometimes the driver ends up securing Freed properly, and sometimes he ends up
securing himself. But on more than one occasion, it has accelerated into a
full-fledged confrontation.
On one trip, after a spat with a different female
driver, a passenger came forward and told Freed, "Hey, man, quit disrespecting
the lady."
Freed replied, "This lady is disrespecting me!"
and then went on to accuse the driver of threatening him. More passengers joined
in the argument and, eventually, the police arrived.
Another time, a group of pissed-off passengers
actually pulled at Freed's wheelchair and attempted to eject him from the bus.
Four men tried to drag his wheelchair out of its space, but Freed, who has good
upper-body strength, firmly clutched a seatback, screaming, "Assault! Assault!"
In several of the videotapes, the bus driver has
said something akin to: "You got issues, man."
Oliver Freed knows he has anger issues. But
perhaps he should. After all, he has been fighting AC Transit for more than five
years to improve what he sees as its lack of attention to people with
disabilities. He keeps a log of the outcome of every one of his bus trips, and
has complained to AC Transit administrators on hundreds of occasions. He has
served on the agency's disability board, and been arrested no fewer than five
times for causing a nuisance on a bus. His methods may be extreme, but what he
shares with many less-combative disabled riders is a belief that AC Transit is
not doing its job.
In 2001, Freed sued AC Transit for not complying
with the terms of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For that lawsuit he
received a settlement of $40,000. He and the district are currently in the
middle of a second lawsuit over the same issues, this one for a minimum of
$100,000. "Obviously, the first time didn't do anything," he said. "They still
don't secure people properly. We are going for a higher amount this time because
we mean business."
Under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act,
bus agencies are required to offer equal transit access to everyone regardless
of their physical or mental condition. After all, public transit is the only way
that many, if not most, people with wheelchairs, impaired vision, or other
conditions can get to work, school, the hospital, or anywhere else that
able-bodied people take for granted. AC Transit's perceived dismissal of their
needs has proven to be a big and costly problem for the agency.
Over the last two years, AC Transit has received
a staggering volume of criticism from its disabled riders. From January 2002 to
November 2003, disabled passengers filed at least 918 complaints with the
agency. Roughly one sixth, 151, were from wheelchair users or blind passengers
who reported "pass-ups" -- incidents in which they say a bus deliberately drove
past them without stopping. Complaints such as this one are typical: "Caller
states she witnessed this driver pass up an elderly disabled woman." The woman
was with a walker and was "waving frantically for the driver to stop. ... Driver
had a very nasty attitude." Another one reads: "Caller states she is in a
[wheelchair], and states driver looked at caller straight in the eye, closed
door on her and drove off."
Another 146 riders complained of being unable to
board a bus because of broken wheelchair lifts. Given that AC Transit drivers
are supposed to ensure that the lifts on their buses are operational before they
start their shifts, some disabled passengers believe that drivers often lie when
they say their lift isn't working. Still others complained of waiting for a bus
only to be denied service because it already was full, even though no one else
on board was in a wheelchair, and able-bodied people were sitting in the area
reserved for the disabled.
Perhaps most typical were the 278 accusations
involving rude or unaccommodating drivers. "Caller states that after getting on
bus, the driver grumbled that she 'did not know why you people try to ride the
bus,'" one read. An alarming number of these allegations sound outright
sadistic: "Caller states he is disabled and presented his [disabled ID] card
upon boarding, and states driver took it, and punched a hole in it, and then
threw it out the window, and then made him exit bus." Or this one: "Caller
states her daughter is 16 yrs old, and every morning the above driver harasses
and makes fun of her because she is crippled. The driver let everyone on the
bus, closed the doors, then moved the bus forward to make her daughter walk
more."
The result is a climate of bitterness between AC
Transit and the disabled community, a culture of mutual recrimination stemming
from a document that was supposed to level the playing field: the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
Everyone agrees that most drivers do their jobs
correctly, but widespread evidence suggests that some deliberately pass up
people in wheelchairs, and even more drivers improperly secure them once they
are on board. AC Transit officials agree that there are problems with some
drivers, but point out that hundreds of disabled people ride the bus each day in
safety and comfort. They lay the blame for the agency's high-visibility problems
squarely at the feet of a small number of individual bus drivers -- perhaps 5
percent of the force. After all, they argue, no one can stand over all the
drivers to make sure they are doing their jobs correctly.
This argument angers disabled riders who have
been trying for years to get AC Transit officials to provide them with safe,
convenient transportation. They note that even when complaints pile up at the
transit agency, drivers seem to face little or no recourse for ignoring the
needs of disabled passengers.
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