At 71, Bemanali Maddahi relies on both his wheelchair and a bus to visit his local swimming pool.
That regular trip is usually easy because Perth's buses are able to be lowered to the curb and are equipped with ramps.
But that system severely failed him one afternoon last week when he was left seriously injured.
"[My father] asked the bus to stop, he rang the bell and the bus driver stopped," his daughter Maryam told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth.
"Instead of bringing the bus lower using the hydraulic system, that they always do for the people who have wheelchairs, the driver apparently didn't do that.
"My dad asked him a couple of times that if he can bring the bus lower and then open the ramp.
"He refused, he ignored him, and he just opened the ramp on a very steep angle and asked him to go out."
'Dad has come face down'
Ms Maddahi said her father felt pressured to leave and subsequently fell out of his chair.
"My dad has come face down, falling off his wheelchair, and people ran out of the bus and basically took this poor 71-year-old, semi-disabled person off the ground and put him back on his wheelchair," she said.
Ms Maddahi said her father sustained numerous injuries and could not get out of bed without assistance.
"He has injured his knee and right elbow very badly," she said.
"The whole arm is basically bruised black and it's so painful.
"They believe that the tendons have been torn and some small fracture might have happened.
"We were just so lucky that his head didn't hit the curb and he didn't die."
CCTV confirms account
PTA spokesman David Hynes said a preliminary investigation and review of the CCTV footage on the bus had largely confirmed Mr Maddahi's account.
He said the problem appeared to have started when another passenger pressed the stop button before Mr Maddahi.
"The bell in the wheelchair bay is the thing that alerts the driver to the fact that a wheelchair person is coming off, so he gets all that stuff ready," Mr Hynes said.
"Because the driver didn't realise that the man in the wheelchair was getting off, he let off the person who'd rung the bell through the door in the middle of the bus, and then started pulling off."
Mr Maddahi then called out to let the driver know he needed to disembark.
"So the driver then slowed down and looked for another spot to drop him," Mr Hynes said.
"But the fact that he'd moved away from the approved bus stop, which has got the hard stand at the right height and so on — he shouldn't really have moved away from it.
"He did his best to find another spot and extended the ramp, but it was too low.
"He should have lowered the bus as well.
"It was not our finest hour."
Trust in service shattered
Mr Hynes said the PTA prided itself on providing an accessible service and it appeared the driver had not followed the procedures for assisting passengers in wheelchairs.
"The driver should have should have realised from looking that the ramp was going to be at the wrong steepness because it had gone down to ground level," he said.
"We have handbooks that give drivers procedures and protocols that they're supposed to follow, and they weren't all followed in this case."
Mr Hynes said the contractor that ran that route would be speaking to the driver and further action may be taken.
Ms Maddahi said the incident had shattered her faith in the service and she was not sure how her father would continue to be independent or attend his pool sessions in future.
"I'm not going to let him go on the bus anymore because I can't trust any of my loved ones will be safe," she said.
Mornings with Nadia Mitsopoulos is live on ABC Radio Perth every weekday from 8:30-11am. Tune in on 720AM, digital radio or the ABC Listen app.