Driver Kicks Everyone off Bus After They Refuse To Make Room for Man in Wheelchair
Everyone wants to be the person who does really great things for the world. You know, the individual who participates in titanic, civilization-wide change.
Imagine curing cancer or minimizing poverty or eliminating government corruption. That would be awesome, right?
Sadly, few of us get the opportunity to impact others in such a sweeping way. And when it comes to helping in smaller circumstances, well, sometimes we fail to take advantage of those opportunities.
Just look at what happened recently in Clichy, a suburb of Paris, France. According to WFIE, it involved a man named François Le Berre.
Le Berre wasn’t your ordinary bus passenger. For one thing, he had multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease that can disrupt a sufferer’s mobility.
Second, he was in a wheelchair. That normally wouldn’t be a problem on a French bus.
Hier en attendant le bus à Paris, personne ne voulait se pousser. Comme personne ne bougeait le chauffeur s’est levé et à dit “Terminus ! Tout le monde descend! Après il est venu me voir et m’a dit “vous pouvez monter et les autres , vous attendez celui d’après!
François Le Berre pic.twitter.com/Icb5fqPMfD— Accessible POUR TOUS (@tomipa06) October 21, 2018
As the London Evening Standard pointed out, Parisian busses almost always have a space for a wheelchair — as did this one.
There was just one problem: None of the passengers would move so that La Berre could get to his seat.
“Yesterday waiting for the bus in Paris, I laughed; because no one wanted to (move),” he wrote on social media. It truly takes a stout heart to smile when no one wants to exert the smallest effort to help you.
However, not everyone found it funny. In fact, the bus driver was downright enraged by the lack of consideration his passengers showed, Asia One reported.
Instead of pulling away from the station, he put the bus in park. Then he did something absolutely shocking.
Le Berre said, “As no one was moving, the driver stood up and said ‘Terminating! Everybody off!’ After, he came to see me and said, ‘You can go up, and the others, you wait for the next one!’”
The unidentified driver’s brassy stand has resonated on social media. As of Friday afternoon, nearly 6,000 people have shared a tweet by the group Accessible Pour Tous (which means “Accessible for All”) that described the situation.
Some, though, were concerned what would happen to the driver. Wouldn’t the individual get in trouble for the good deed?
Well, it turns out that the driver won’t. Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, which operates Paris’ public-transit system, saw the tweet. A representative responded, saying the group wanted to find the driver.
However, it wasn’t to chastise the individual. Instead, the group wanted to congratulate him.
It explained that the driver wouldn’t face sanctions because clearing the bus was done to help another passenger. Now that’s an act of charity I can get behind!
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