Footage of the distressing moment a blind mum and her baby were forced to wait at the side of a busy road because of a thoughtless delivery driver has been posted online.
If it weren’t for her guide dog, Ava, Dr Amy Kavanagh would have been left stranded in the middle of the road with her baby waiting for safe access to a path to open up.
At the time, the opening was blocked by the driver of a postage van who promised to only be “one minute” but ended up being far longer.
In her video, Dr Kavanagh detailed how Ava initially alerted her to the blockage by stopping.
A worker eventually addressed her, saying: “I’ll be one minute, is that OK?”
The mum responded by telling him, “well no, not really, because I can’t cross the road safely”.
He repeated that he would be “just one minute”, which Dr Kavanagh told him was unacceptable.
“So I have to stand here for one minute while you’re parked illegally do I? Great.”
In a defeated tone, she told viewers she had no choice but to “just stand at the side of the road”.
A short time later, a kind member of the public stepped in and offered to help get her across safely, but Dr Kavanagh’s experience was sadly not unique or uncommon.
In sharing the short clip to Twitter, she said it highlighted exactly why “it’s not OK to park over dropped curbs and tactile paving even for ‘just a minute’”.
“Without Ava I would’ve walked into the van and been forced into oncoming traffic.”
She later revealed the van was parked in the inconvenient spot for several minutes, which left her questioning: “Why is my time as a disabled person less important than a package?”
Dr Kavanagh got the van’s number plate and reported them, but was annoyed at how accepted stopping in an illegal spot was for everyday drivers.
In response to people arguing that delivery workers were being pushed to their limit with the escalation of online shopping, she maintained there was simply no excuse to park illegally.
“I’m sorry the gig economy is gross. But this driver parked illegally. He put me a blind person and my baby at risk, as well as other disabled pedestrians. That’s not just an inconvenience,” she said.
Another blind woman shared a similar frustration with drivers who blocked part of a dropped kerb when they parked.
“This also applies to people who rely on kerb cuts to safely get onto the sidewalk. The number of entitled jerks who blithely block them for ‘just one minute’ is maddening,” they wrote.
The horrible ordeal came as a wheelchair user this week revealed how hard it was to take public transport, filming her struggle with getting a guard’s attention in time to get her train.
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