Train GraphicClick on the map to explore geographics
 
I need help
FAQ
Emergency
About .
Travel & transport from BBC stories as at 17:15 28 Mar 2024
- How do I renew my UK passport and what is the 10-year rule?
* Passengers pleaded with knifeman during attack
* Family anger at sentence on fatal crash driver, 19
- Easter travel warning as millions set to hit roads
Read about the forum [here].
Register [here] - it's free.
What do I gain from registering? [here]
 02/06/24 - Summer Timetable starts
17/08/24 - Bus to Imber
27/09/25 - 200 years of passenger trains

On this day
28th Mar (1992)
MOD Kineton tour, branch line society (*)

Train RunningCancelled
16:54 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
17:54 Cardiff Central to London Paddington
17:57 London Paddington to Worcester Foregate Street
18:37 Westbury to Swindon
19:33 London Paddington to Worcester Shrub Hill
20:13 Swindon to Westbury
20:56 Worcester Foregate Street to London Paddington
Short Run
14:49 Plymouth to Cardiff Central
15:10 Gloucester to Weymouth
15:15 Plymouth to London Paddington
15:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
15:30 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
15:42 Exeter St Davids to London Paddington
16:00 London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads
16:19 Carmarthen to London Paddington
16:23 Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central
16:35 London Paddington to Plymouth
16:50 Plymouth to London Paddington
17:03 London Paddington to Penzance
17:30 London Paddington to Taunton
17:36 Swindon to Westbury
Delayed
12:15 Penzance to London Paddington
13:59 Cardiff Central to Penzance
14:15 Penzance to London Paddington
14:30 Cardiff Central to Portsmouth Harbour
14:36 London Paddington to Paignton
15:03 London Paddington to Penzance
16:03 London Paddington to Penzance
17:04 Bristol Temple Meads to Filton Abbey Wood
17:51 Filton Abbey Wood to Bristol Temple Meads
PollsOpen and recent polls
Closed 2024-03-25 Easter Escape - to where?
Abbreviation pageAcronymns and abbreviations
Stn ComparatorStation Comparator
Rail newsNews Now - live rail news feed
Site Style 1 2 3 4
Next departures • Bristol Temple MeadsBath SpaChippenhamSwindonDidcot ParkwayReadingLondon PaddingtonMelksham
Exeter St DavidsTauntonWestburyTrowbridgeBristol ParkwayCardiff CentralOxfordCheltenham SpaBirmingham New Street
March 28, 2024, 17:26:13 *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Forgotten your username or password? - get a reminder
Most recently liked subjects
[133] West Wiltshire Bus Changes April 2024
[132] would you like your own LIVE train station departure board?
[53] Return of the BRUTE?
[44] If not HS2 to Manchester, how will traffic be carried?
[41] Infrastructure problems in Thames Valley causing disruption el...
[32] Reversing Beeching - bring heritage and freight lines into the...
 
News: A forum for passengers ... with input from rail professionals welcomed too
 
   Home   Help Search Calendar Login Register  
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: 'Paws for thought' - PLEASE, do read this item - it is quite remarkable  (Read 1305 times)
Chris from Nailsea
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 17865


I am not railway staff


View Profile Email
« on: January 04, 2017, 21:34:32 »

From the BBC» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Quote
The guide dog that spies on people who ignore its owner

Unable to see the world around him, Amit Patel fitted his guide dog with a camera and set about recording evidence of the discrimination he faced but could not see.

"The city is a scary place. It's like someone put you in the middle of Trafalgar Square, turned you in a circle and said 'find your way home'."

That is Amit Patel's new reality after he lost his sight unexpectedly in 2012, six months after he got married. He now relies on guide dog Kika to get him around the once familiar streets of London. But the footage captured by his canine guide hasn't always shown a city willing to help him.

"The video came out of necessity," Patel says. "Kika was getting hit by peoples' bags and she was getting a lot of abuse. A woman stopped me one day and had a go at me for holding everyone up and said I should apologise, which was a real shock."



The former doctor found a solution - attach a GoPro to Kika's harness and film every journey. Patel's wife, Seema, can then review the footage if it is felt there was something amiss about that day.

And when alterations were made to a London train station the camera came into its own. "I asked for help and no one came," Patel recounts. "The video shows lots of staff standing around me and this one guy looking over many times. Eventually when the staff member actually came to me the first thing he said was 'sorry I didn't see you' and that really bugged me. He wouldn't say that to someone who wasn't visually impaired. It really makes me angry. It's the fact that someone is fobbing me off."


An image from Kika's footage of the Network Rail incident in London

The footage was sent to Network Rail giving Patel the "valuable evidence" needed to lodge a formal complaint about an incident he couldn't see. "It made me feel vulnerable but having the footage was a godsend," he says. "Having the camera, having the voice, having the actual scenario played out in real time it actually gives me something to go back to the company and say 'this is what happened to me and it needs to be sorted'."

The video had an impact and Network Rail investigated before giving further training to its staff.


Kika's camera captures an image of Amit on the London Underground

"While in this instance the event and associated disruption was not organised by or held at the station itself, we do recognise that the station can be a complicated place to navigate," a spokesman says. "That is why we have hired many extra staff to look after passengers."

For newly blind Patel, standing alone for several minutes can feel like hours. "One of the things I noticed with losing my sight is how lonely it is. If I'm travelling by public transport I will be the scared little boy sat in the corner. You can't listen to music because you're listening out for dangers or to station announcements."

Patel says it is only since he lost his sight that he has become aware of the discrimination visually impaired people can face.

A sudden loss
Patel learned he had keratoconus - a condition which changes the shape of the cornea - in the final year of medical school. Lenses to push the corneas back into shape stopped working and six cornea transplants were rejected by his body until he was told "no more". It was a series of burst blood vessels which caused the unexpected loss of sight within 48 hours. Patel says: "I woke up every morning thinking I'd get my sight back. For about six months I was quite shut off, depressed and I would go to the bathroom and have a cry. The one thing that stayed in my mind was that I would never see my loved ones. It was holding on to the last memories I had."


"There are taxi drivers who will see you and won't stop. You phone the company and they say they didn't see you, but you look at the footage and see them having looked at you and driving right past."

Other incidents he says highlight a lack of thought - especially on London's Underground.

"People assume, because I have a guide dog, I can walk around them but they make us walk near the tracks or I can say to Kika 'find me a seat' and I'll put my hand down on one and someone will sit on it and refuse to get up."

The loss of his sight led Patel to change his life dramatically. The former University College Hospital doctor moved to New Eltham in south London so his wife didn't have to travel so far for work and wouldn't spend so much time away from him.


The view of New Eltham High Street from Kika's camera

Patel says he had assumed, as a doctor, he would know where to get support, but he found that wasn't the case and he became frustrated at the simple mistakes he made - miscalculations led to stair falls and fingers were burnt from trying to find out how full his coffee cup was.

Beyond the major life changes there were more subtle experiences too. "Your balance goes awry. I felt like I walked on a cloud sometimes, and if I find a pair of shoes I'll buy three pairs because a change in grip makes a real difference. My hearing's increased and my sense of smell, and the way I touch things."

There have also been more unexpected side effects.


The camera has given Amit the confidence to go out alone with Kika and his baby son

"I have small pixels of light coming into my eyes and my brain interprets that as images. It'll put four pixels together and build a photo - so you may be sitting on the couch while thinking a car's coming towards you."

Patel now supports people who have lost their sight unexpectedly and gives talks to community organisations using the GoPro footage to demonstrate what Kika sees.

Despite all the challenges he has faced, including coming to terms with never seeing his baby son, Patel has accepted his new world.

"My life at the moment is so much more vivid, it's more colourful than it was when I had sight. It still fills me with dread leaving the house, because I have no control and am completely reliant on Kika, but we're out all of the time - any excuse."


My very best wishes to Amit Patel and Kika - I'd love to meet you sometime!  Cheesy

Logged

William Huskisson MP (Member of Parliament) was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830.  Many more have died in the same way since then.  Don't take a chance: stop, look, listen.

"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner."  Discuss.
Do you have something you would like to add to this thread, or would you like to raise a new question at the Coffee Shop? Please [register] (it is free) if you have not done so before, or login (at the top of this page) if you already have an account - we would love to read what you have to say!

You can find out more about how this forum works [here] - that will link you to a copy of the forum agreement that you can read before you join, and tell you very much more about how we operate. We are an independent forum, provided and run by customers of Great Western Railway, for customers of Great Western Railway and we welcome railway professionals as members too, in either a personal or official capacity. Views expressed in posts are not necessarily the views of the operators of the forum.

As well as posting messages onto existing threads, and starting new subjects, members can communicate with each other through personal messages if they wish. And once members have made a certain number of posts, they will automatically be admitted to the "frequent posters club", where subjects not-for-public-domain are discussed; anything from the occasional rant to meetups we may be having ...

 
Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.2 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
This forum is provided by customers of Great Western Railway (formerly First Great Western), and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that the content provided by one of our posters contravenes our posting rules (email link to report). Forum hosted by Well House Consultants

Jump to top of pageJump to Forum Home Page