Victorian woman Kathryn Beaton says repeated, illegal denials of service from drivers refusing to allow her guide dog into their vehicles have left her effectively housebound.
Edited to add: “anxious and in tears” is some shit tier headline writing when the real problem is the loss of independence and freedom, and the hours she has had to spend waiting just to be actively discriminated against.
A few reasons. Firstly disabled people aren’t going to frequently tip in Australia, spending money to get everywhere is very expensive already. That’s before all the other costs that come with being disabled. Plus anti-tip culture is still a big thing in Australia.
Secondly, a significant amount of drivers don’t want mess, some of them are just anti-dogs for cultural or religious reasons, some people have phobias or allergies… some people have just heard too many horror stories about self-declared “emotional support animals”.
It’s a huge problem, and this sort of thing happens a lot, in different ways for different disabilities.
I think there should be an option in rideshares to register a service animal. Drivers should not be able to see it when the ride gets offered, but only when they are about like 1 block from the rider, then it show up as: “The rider have disabilities that requires the use of a service animal. Please be reminded that denying a ride due to a rider’s disability or due to unwillingness to accommodate the service animal is illegal under [Insert Country Name] law. Thank you for your cooperation!”
I’ve personally witnessed 2 taxi drivers in a 10 minute time span who were hailed on the side of the street begin to pull over to collect a passenger, but stop as soon as they see the guide dog and drive off saying “sorry, no dogs”. If they can deny someone to their face, they will deny them 1 block away.
I’d like to see the companies allow people with evidence of disability affected by dogs to opt out in advance from being assigned pickup jobs for people with service animals.
If the driver deny to accomodate for enough times, the driver should get deactivated.
