Ride-share drivers often cancel when they find out they're booked to pick up someone in a wheelchair, says New Zealand Paralympian Barney Koneferenisi.
Fed up with this kind of treatment, the 27-year-old wheelchair rugby player is raising money for a ride-share service that's safe and user-friendly for people with disabilities.
Barney Koneferenisi Photo: Attitude Pictures
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This new accessible transport service requires the development of an innovative disability-friendly app and eventually the purchase of a fleet of fully-accessible wheelchair vehicles, Barney says.
It's an ambitious goal, but he's sick of waiting.
"We've wasted our time complaining to these big corporations and they don't listen. It's been ten years of battle. So instead of wasting another ten years, we decided to take this matter into our own hands."
People who use wheelchairs or travel with service animals are left vulnerable to attack when they're kept waiting for an accessible ride, which can sometimes be up to 2 hours, Barney says.
With the service he proposes, fully accessible vans will be available on-demand, allowing people who always have to prebook a ride more freedom of movement.
"[Having to prebook every ride] kind of barricades us from society and puts a time limit on what time we can go out.
"We're normal people in society and we shouldn't have to prebook to go out and enjoy our lives."
Photo: givealittle
Barney, who was born in Samoa, lost his right hand and part of his left hand as a baby due to complications from meningitis.
By the time he was a teenager, both of his legs had been amputated, too.
Barney says he feels lucky to have moved to New Zealand as a child because even though personal transport is a struggle, the situation for people with disabilities is much worse in Samoa.
Children are seen as useless if they're not physically able to help out on the land, he says.
"As a kid [in Samoa], you're brought up to do chores, move around the land, grow corn and cook food in the umu. If you are wheelchair-bound or you have a learning disability, you are pretty much stuck in the house and can't do anything so you're looked at as dead weight as a family member."
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
Yet Barney's physical strength as a teenager caught the eye of former Wheel Black Cameron Leslie when they met at Auckland's Artificial Limb Centre in 2009.
"[Cameron] said 'You look like an agile young man. You look like you could play some wheelchair rugby.'
"I was like 'What? Rugby in a wheelchair - how does that work?'"
At his first wheelchair rugby practice, Barney "face-planted" into the court, fell out of his chair and had the best day of his life.
Eleven years later, in 2020, he replaced Cameron in the Wheel Blacks and scored 23 tries against the formidable American team at the Tokyo Paralympic Games.
Watch the short doco Barney Looks Back: