[nagdu] Cab drivers in DC pass blind people with guide dogs

[Dan Weiner]

Granted, Sherri,  the wording is regrettable, but the fact is we're not
going to win on some of these points and in the case of the article  we'd be
missing the forest for the trees  pointing that out,, or however that goes.
At lease when I lived in Maryland I can tell you that access was a problem
when it came to cabs.
And, those friends of mine who lived in DC would confirm the estimate of
half the drivers passing by or not taking you.

This is the height of absurdity and even shameful, that we've had eighty
years of guide dog training here in the USA and it's still that way.
And like it or not, nine times out of ten in my neck of the woods in
Maryland it was people from the mid East, Africa and Asia, emigrants in
other words, who did the worst offending in this regard. This is the first
time in my life, sorry to say, that I started feeling a real hostility to
emigrants, who, in my way of thinking, were dishing out to people from here
worse treatment then they were getting. They had jobs and could find them
quickly again, no skin off their nose to treat a blind person like dirt.
And, guys, don't start with me the old chorus of how they're afraid of dogs,
etc. I couldn't care less, it isn't a dog popularity contest we're in here.
The reasons are immaterial to me, how to reverse this trend is what I'm
interested in.


Sad but true it was a lot of folks from other lands who did this.
.
Not  that there weren't any good old native American born, white and black
guys, who had their chance to step up to the plate and be butt holes because
there were.
So, you were lucky if you got drivers who knew you, or I'd take numbers of
cabbies I liked and give them some business on the side, but frankly, the
fact that we have  to do that means there's something seriously wrong.
I mention that because some blind friends there said rather  superciliously,
"well, what I do is make sure I get the drivers who don't mind dogs".  I'm
beating my head against a wall, here, guys, but the cabbies are supposed to
take us, ain't up to us to get a little black book of people who decide it's
convenient to follow the law.
Now, here in Florida, I've only taken a few cabs recently as I'm trying to
save money, so what can you tell me about access here, or Marian in Tampa,
etc?

There would be only two reasons that at some point I decide not to choose a
guide dog as my main means of mobility:
1.  It's hard on me to see them get old and so on, very hard.
2. This access situation.
When I call a cab, I should not have to have my heart in my mouth wondering
whether they're going to see me and drive away.  One of the drivers who
liked me told me that several of them who didn't like dogs would just not
come if they knew it was a dog user and say they came and I wasn't there, or
other little tricks.
In Prince George's County, Maryland, the company had some GPs system whereby
they could tell which driver was nearest to whatever location I was calling
from and he would be assigned.  Now, that would mean I could very often and
would get a person for whatever reason, decided to drive away or in some
other way treat me like the scum of the Earth because I dare to want to be
independent and use a guide dog.

Of course they're computers, the cab company's may not be the most accurate,
I called once from my cell phone when at Dunkin'' Doughnuts and every time I
called from my cell  they'd say "Oh, we'll send someone to the Dunkin'
Doughnuts, and I had to make sure they got it before they hung up.
One day I got really frustrated and said, I don't care who you send but make
it someone who understands English and make sure they're not an idiot."
I swear, one of the cab drivers thought this was funny because whatever
dispatcher had put that under my phone number on the computer, so it would
come up as "has a guide dog, wants someone who understands English, doesn't
want an idiot.".
Still, all of those qualifications didn't help sometimes--smile

Rant over


Dan W.