A shocking story…
A disabled woman was left alone on the side of the road after a bus driver ignored her pleas to lower a wheelchair ramp correctly and refused to allow her despairing friend to disembark. Melody Powell says she was “innocently filming the bus” to demonstrate to her American boyfriend how wheelchair ramps work on UK transport, and while doing so managed to capture the remarkable series of errors. In the video, posted to Facebook group Shit London, the bus approaches the raised paving surrounding the stop but manages to misalign with the pavement, meaning its ramp couldn’t properly extend. Rather than reversing to extend the ramp, the bus driver closes the doors, retracts the mechanism and drives off, leaving Melody alone in the cold. “Are you with somebody?” a passerby asks, before pointing out, “But she’s on the bus!” Melody now says issues around disability access need to be highlighted “as this isn’t the first time” she’s encountered difficulties. Melody wrote on Facebook: On Friday a
