A Chicago disability rights group is suing Uber in federal court, claiming that the transportation company doesn’t provide reliable access to vehicles equipped to handle wheelchair accessible vehicles, in violation of U.S. laws.
Access Living of Metropolitan Chicago filed the lawsuit on Thursday, calling the ride-hailing company’s UberWAV service, which is supposed to dispatch wheelchair-accessible vehicles, “unusable” for folks in motorized wheelchairs, reports DNAinfo.
There just aren’t enough of the vehicles to serve riders in Chicago, the lawsuit claims, with customers saying the cars are often not available. For example: one resident who uses a wheelchair says that even if he’s lucky enough to find one of the WAV vehicles, he’d have to wait for it to cross the city to reach him.
“No one would use Uber if the entire service worked this way,” he says.
To that end, the suit says, between Sept. 2011 and Aug. 2015, Uber provided just 14 rides to customers who require special vehicles. That’s out of a total 1.9 million rides in Chicago since June 2015, the complaint alleges.
“Transportation access has always been a central issue of civil rights for people with disabilities,” Steven P. Blonder, lawyer for Access Living, said in a statement via DNAInfo. “As a growing player in our transportation system, Uber is responsible for delivering its part of that link.”
We’ve reached out to Uber for comment and will update this post when we hear back.
Uber Sued By Chicago Group Claiming Lack Of Wheelchair Accessibility [DNAinfo]
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist
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