VIEWS OF AN NPHTA SHOULD COUNCILS SCRAP 100% WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE
YES - in short, apart from in our biggest cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester where the traditional black cab, also a WAV, is something of an icon.
I hear cries of “What about the needs of people with disabilities?” Certainly, we do need to ensure that all people both able-bodied and those less so for whatever reason have equal access to licensed vehicles in order to complete their journeys safely, with dignity and in reason- able comfort.
The problem is that the international sym- bol for disability has much to answer for in that it leads to a popular perception, also mirrored by licensing authorities, of disability being akin to being bound to a wheelchair.
The reality is quite different, however and I’ve dug up a few statistics:
Wheelchair users account for less than 8% of the 11 million people in the UK with disability and less than 1.9% of the general population. This means that 92% of people with disability are completely unrepresented and even alienated by the international symbol depicting a wheelchair.
https://www.disabilitysport.org.uk/facts-and- figures-about-disabled-people-in-the-uk.html
https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/ statistics/
wheelchair-stats.php
Furthermore, not all wheelchair users are completely bound to their chairs. Some require one, not because they are unable to walk, but because they are unable to walk very far. They would likely prefer the comfort of sitting in a normal car seat which is designed for the purpose of travel by motor vehicle rather than sitting in a wheelchair which is not.
They may require some assistance in boarding and alighting from the vehicle with the wheelchair being stowed in the boot but not as much as a wheelchair- bound passenger who requires the driver to wheel them up a ramp before they are rotated to face forward and
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the chair secured with straps. The driver also needs specific training to ensure this is done safely.
We don’t have figures for the number of people who are bound to the wheelchair as a subset of all wheelchair users but it would be a reasonable assumption that they account for around half of the total. If this is so, then wheelchair-bound passengers account for less than 1% of the general population and 4% of people with disability.
This brings us to the problem of WAVs which for many people with disability who are not going to leave, enter and travel in the vehicle seated in the wheelchair: the high ground clearance makes boarding and alighting from the vehicle considerably more difficult for the vast majority of them.
Go to any large taxi/private hire booking office and you will find that the number of people with disability requesting a saloon or ‘low’ vehicles exceeds those requesting WAVs by more than ten to one.
The simple fact is, a one-size-fits-all vehicle that meets the needs of all passengers, able-bodied and with disability alike, just doesn’t exist.
Not only that, but WAVs are expensive both to buy and run, have a larger carbon footprint and have higher emissions of nitrogen dioxide and particulates - even if they meet Euro 6 standard compared to saloon vehicles. Yes, there is an electric WAV, the LEVC TX but it is expensive to buy and only has an all-electric range of 80 miles on a charge. The real-world range is reported to be less than that. Saloon electric vehicles typically have a range of up to 300 miles and this is set to improve in the years to come.
As councils up and down the land seek to reduce the environmental impact of licensed vehicles, they would do well to incentivise purchasing electric and hybrid vehicles rather than only allowing those ungainly, uncomfortable, mostly polluting and expensive WAVs to be used as hackney carriages.
Why do many councils insist on 100% WAV policies specifically for hackney carriages? After all, people in wheelchairs are more likely to pre-book a journey than
DECEMBER 2021
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