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TruckNet UK community manager Rikki Chequer discusses attitudes to driver disability.
Page 9
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Once in a while, a topic comes up on the TruckNet UK forums that provokes unexpected responses. This week, a driver asks why a certain RDC has disabled lift access to the drivers' booking-in office.
To quote: "So I wonder, did any of you ever see a wheelchair-bound lorry driver? If yes, did he also have a lift to the cab? Or is it just some form of political correctness? But what about blind drivers then? Why there wasn't any information written in Braille? But, being serious now, isn't it a great waste of money?'' A surprising number of respondents to this post are, in fact, disabled professional drivers. It seems that many employers nowadays will make adjustments to enable employees to keep working. While none of the forum members who replied are wheelchair-bound, many remember a driver whose boss had a truck fitted with a lift and hand controls.
One driver says: "I can only applaud this kind of thing. It all helps keep the likes of me in work for longer, therefore saving us the indignity and expense of claiming benefit."
Please also note that these things are not only used by wheelchair users. If I was having a bad day, I'd be using them too.
Another pertinent comment was: "Classing a person disabled opens a can of worms with employers. In the eyes of the law, I am classed as disabled and my issue — I have neural sensory hearing loss, which, in truckers' and laymen's terms is a 30% hearing loss doesn't stop me driving. I still hear a bit, wagon noise doesn't bother me — and fridges humming in the next truck, can't hear them. Employers have to follow the law now due to the Disability Discrimination Act (it does work its wonders sometimes)."
It seems that our industry is quite receptive to drivers with disabilities. And despite the number of drivers who have posted to say they do have a disability, it is more probable that the disabled lift from the lorry park to the goods in office was placed there for a member of staff than for the benefit of drivers with difficulties in accessing up stairs.