Well, I finally did get my motorbike licence, but not without its share of dramas.

A kick in the gut

A couple of weeks after the previously mentioned incident, my brother came over to talk about the Perth City Legal website I was developing for his partner Denise, who is a lawyer. While he was there, I opened a letter from the DPI and was totally gobsmacked. I started to read it out loud to Neil and Graeme but couldn’t finish more than a sentence or two as I was too upset.

It basically said that unless I had a medical within 30 days, to ascertain that I was fit to drive, my drivers licence (car and all!) would be revoked. Even if I got the medical certificate, they could still at their pleasure revoke the licence. This was because — get this — I “suffer from cochlear implants”.

Graeme took the letter off me and huffed and puffed about it. He is a hearing aid wearer, and realised that the implications were far and wide for all hearing impaired people across Australia. He took it home with him to give to Denise. Denise is a personal injury lawyer but nevertheless has a lot of experience in advocacy.

No standards

I explained the situation to a cochlear implant email list to which I belong, and someone (thanks Naomi!) sent me a PDF of the standards adopted by traffic licencing centres Australia-wide.

There is no standard for hearing.

That’s right. You can be deaf as a doorpost and (unless you’re a commercial driver) according to the national standards, it doesn’t matter a jot.

However, the DPI required me to get a doctor to assess me against non-existent standards to determine whether or not I was fit to drive.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

My audiologist and surgeon both said there were no issues with deaf people driving. Quite the opposite — studies my audiologist has done demonstrate that deaf people are more visually aware, and being visually aware is the important thing when driving.

Denise said I had a good case, even though the “discretionary powers of the Director General [of the DPI] are wide”, and she wrote to them.

But that’s not all…

In the meantime, I went for my motorbike test and failed. (Those wretched figure-Os!)

I was unable to re-book the test for some obscure reason, and was told to phone on the next working day. (It was Friday, so that meant Monday.) Neil phoned for me as I still avoid the phone like the plague, and they told him I couldn’t re-book until I’d had a medical to prove I was ok to drive.

What???? I still had time for that…

Neil was most unhappy and let them know. He’s a great person to have on your side. :-D No one he spoke to had a clue what cochlear implants were. In their infinite wisdom, they apparently had decided it was some kind of disease.

They told him that if I was deaf, I could get a licence — no problem. But because I suffer from cochlear implants, I can’t.

Neil told them that in that case, his advice to me was to go to the licensing centre and take out my speech processors, and say, “I’m deaf!” (Which I am — totally — without the speech processors on.)

Sheesh.

He spent quite some time trying to get some sense out of these people. At one point, the woman he was talking to said, ok she’d remove the requirement for a medical certificate, but leave a condition on my licence that I must wear a hearing aid when driving.

Neil said, “No you will not. She doesn’t wear a hearing aid. She can’t wear a hearing aid!” Around and around.

Until he said he would sue for discrimination and other stuff, and right away they backed off.

How pathetic is that? They knew they didn’t know what they were talking about, didn’t have a leg to stand on, but were sticking to their guns anyway for the sake of petty bureaucracy. But, because they knew they were in the wrong, they backed down at the first threat of legal trouble.

Boo, DPI. Boo.

It’s all good — kinda!

Still, I have my motorbike licence now, and next step is to get myself the Vespa of my dreams!

I’ve been tossing up lately as to whether or not to sell my car and buy a scooter. There are pros and cons, but I went to a scooter shop on Thursday and was really, really impressed with the customer focus of these people. Nothing was too much trouble. More on that in another post.

While undecided about whether or not I’d actually get a scooter, it seemed very little trouble, while in Joondalup, to go to the licensing centre to get my motorbike learners’ permit.

One of the questions on the application form was related to physical disabilities, with an option for “Other”. I wrote that I am deaf but am a cochlear implant recipient.

When the girl at the counter saw this, she said she’d just check in her files to make sure that wasn’t a problem. There was nothing in her files about deafness or hearing impairment at all but was that enough for her? Of course not. She had to go and make a fuss. She went away to “ask”, and over ten minutes later returned and said I’d have to go to my doctor and get a letter saying he/she thought it was ok for me to drive.

(Bear in mind I’ve had my car licence for 23 years.)

So I wasn’t a happy chappy and I asked to see the documentation that decreed I should do so. I said, if this is engraved in stone then so be it, but if someone has made an arbitrary decision then I want to know about it.

She disappeared and didn’t return for quite some time. We probably waited there at the counter for half an hour or more in total. At one point, her supervisor appeared and asked for my drivers licence number. I started to seethe, because I’d simply asked to see the documentation that said a deaf or hearing-impaired person was unable to drive, not to have it all checked against my own details. What was a general enquiry had suddenly become personal. WTF?

Eventually someone came and said no I didn’t have to go and get a letter from the doctor (well, what a surprise — there was no rule about that and someone quite clearly had made an arbitrary decision, but I’d made a fuss about it, so…) and I simply had to fill out a form stating that I had this physical condition.

There would be no problem getting my learners permit at all.

Grrrrrr.

I don’t know about you but I’m absolutely gobsmacked and horrified that individual staff should apparently decide that someone who is deaf (albeit with cochlear implants) has no brain and is unable to drive, even though all the documentation available to them says it’s not a problem. But because they personally find it a problem, it becomes a problem — unless, of course, the customer complains loudly enough.

Government of Western Australia — the buck won’t stop here. Although it ended well enough (I have my motorbike learners’ permit) this is a clear case of discrimination.

Shame.