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Supersized pushchairs disrupt our bus service
• I WRITE in support of the driver of an 88 bus who had to deal with one of the now increasingly popular over-large pushchairs and its unreasonable woman owner on a recent Sunday afternoon.
As the woman boarded with the pushchair, the driver asked her please to fold it.
The woman refused and started to rant, positing a strange argument that the pushchair would be even wider when folded.
She flounced about causing a scene and shouting: “Can’t you see I’m seven months pregnant?”
Pregnancy is not an illness and certainly she was far from frail, judging by the energy she deployed arguing, threatening to report the driver and thrashing her arms about in an attention-grabbing display.
And all the while she refused to move and persisted in blocking the aisle with her 4 x 4 pushchair, making it difficult for new passengers to board the bus at Robert Street. Eventually, to everybody’s relief, she got off the bus.
When I looked at the space available, it was clear that the woman’s pushchair axles and wheels were too wide to fit into the allocated space. So the driver was right.
Bus users have to bear in mind that the driver has responsibility and authority.
Drivers also have a schedule to keep to. Distraction and unreasonable behaviour by passengers only serve to disrupt the service. Passengers waiting further down the route then complain that the bus is late.
So the Little Lord Fauntleroys and Princess Prisses will have to lump it in more modestly sized pushchairs.
A child, if aged under three, should sit on their mother’s lap if the bus is crowded.
Older children should give up their seats to any standing adult.
We did so, growing up after the Second World War. Which is why we (the Mick Jagger generation) are slimmer, more agile than today’s over-stuffed youth – and still rocking it!
Maggie Milner
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