The Wheelchair Accessible Van
It took a long time to
select
a wheelchair-accessible van. The reason is simple: until Jeff was sitting in the
power wheelchair he would actually be using, it was impossible to know what type
of van would fit him and his chair best.
Most wheelchair users purchase a
side-entry van, and that is what nearly everyone suggested we should get. But we
finally settled on a rear-entry conversion of a Dodge Grand Caravan.
Because Jeff’s chair -- the OmegaTrac -- is
unusually beefy, we ordered every heavy-duty suspension and power option the
Dodge catalog offered. Dodge
Mobility site...
The company that turned a normal van
into a rear-entry wheelchair van was
Freedom Motors, in Michigan.
Opting for a rear-entry van was
absolutely the right decision. Jeff drives in a straight line to get in and out;
there is none of the twisting and turning that every side-entry van would have
required. The van rides smoother and more naturally than every other van we
tried -- due in large part to the suspension upgrades -- and the mechanical
stuff that operates the tailgate lift and ramp is out of sight and out of the
way.
 We
use the EZ Lock system to hold Jeff’s chair in
place. He drives into the van, and without any help engages a pin (mounted on
his chair) into a locking plate attached to the floor of the van. To disengage
the chair, we just push a button on the dashboard.
Manufacturer site...
Before we got the new van, we
hauled Jeff around in an old Ford that
rattled, bucked, and sometimes went to sleep in the middle of a trip. 
The
new van arrived at the end of January, 2000.
It had taken eighteen
months
for us to get something that -- within two hours after the accident
-- we absolutely knew we would need as soon as possible.
It takes that long to make some of
these choices, and execute them. If we had been willing to make bad decisions,
we could have made them much quicker.
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