A French driver has been celebrated for booting every single passenger off his bus after they failed to make room for a gentleman in a wheelchair.
Francois Le Berre, who has multiple sclerosis, was waiting to get on a bus in a Paris neighbourhood, but none of the passengers would move to grant him space.
The bus driver, who hasn’t been identified, saw the problem and took the unusual action of asking every single passenger to vacate the bus. He then allowed Francois Le Berre to come on board and drove off with him as the sole passenger.
A tweet reporting the incident was shared by a group called ‘Accessible Pour Tous’, which translates as ‘accessible for all’ on behalf of Francois Le Berre.
Nobody wanted to move and because no one was moving the driver stood up and said “Terminating! Everybody off!” and he made them get off and wait for the next bus and it’s been shared more than 5,000 times and liked by more than 10,000 people, with many congratulating the bus driver and reprimanding the passengers who failed to move.
“Bravo to the bus driver, but shame on the passengers,” wrote one person. But another responded: “You wouldn’t have moved either.”
Buses in the French metropolis usually have one or two spaces for a wheelchair and passengers are supposed to give priority to them and enable users to get on but most people believe that it’s not their problem and they’re simply out for themselves.
Sadly, people in wheelchairs are just transparent to other people that are not disabled and most people that aren’t disabled just will not move for a disabled person and we should be praising this bus driver, I would have also have booted them off in a heartbeat if they refused anyone disabled, elderly, pregnant or perhaps someone with children because these people are just narrow-minded human beings that only think of themselves and this bus driver was a real gentleman.
Although I’m not sure how all the passengers were causing problems aside from the person that was in the disabled space and how could have their removal helped? And I guess it was a tad unfair on all the passengers that were sitting on regular seats, it’s not like the wheelchair user could have used those seats.
By all means, boot off those using the priority seats but it could be classified as a huge overreaction to kick off all the other paying customers but still well done to the man because I’m disabled and have had to face the London Underground in my wheelchair and everyone was especially accommodating and Londoners are clearly much more helpful than Parisians.
Saying this, the service was terminated and was presumably the quickest way for everyone, then the able-bodied could promptly jump on the next bus because drivers often get vilified if they attempt to police individual or small groups of passengers and usually have to wait for reinforcements.
And perhaps next time the other passengers are sitting, no doubt staring out of the windows or at their phones to circumvent the issue could help and ask other passengers to move because presumably any of the passengers could have got up to help make room, even if they were sitting down.
I guess the moral of the story is, that if one person won’t move, they all have to!