These new rules won't have any effect on renting ECVs or using them on busses. I don't know where you got that, but it isn't the case
For me, I hope it does have an effect. If, as has been speculated, a large number of people using the GAC were able bodied men and women, who didn't use an ECV the other 358 days of the year, and if these people are now put off enough by the recent rule changes that they no longer see a benefit to renting the ECV to go along with a bogus note from their doctor (or whatever), then the congestion they cause, both in the parks and on buses may subside a bit.
We're all good people here, and the personal back and forth is getting out of hand. No one suggested that the family was justified in their anger at being asked to move. Those seats are reserved for the handicapped, and anyone who can read english (or spanish probably) would know that, and should be expected to move.
The difference in opinion I think stems from the fact that some of us read the story, and view the 50 year old obese woman as being handicapped (yes - as was asked earlier, the fact that she is obese matters to the story more than her race or religion, because her race or religion are not the reason she's in an ECV - one can assume from the original post that her size is the reason). Other readers view her as a person taking up the space on the bus reserved for people with CP, or make-a-wish kids, or veterans who lost limbs in Iraq - etc. for no more reason than she chooses not to walk around on her own.
I'm obese. While it handicaps me in a number of ways, I don't view it as a handicap - it's the result of a number of bad choices I've made over the years, and I would never expect others to pay for my bad choices by taking up four or five seats on a bus, whether they were full of sleeping children or not. I stand on the bus by choice. Maybe some can't. That's not for me to judge, but I clearly see a difference between the truely hanicapped, and an otherwise healthly large person on an ECV.
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