This person is truly inspirational in reclaiming the freedom that has been taken away from them, despite the odds. Note Nicola lives in Seattle - by American standards, a fairly transit-oriented city - and note how difficult it is for Nicola to reclaim that independence.<p>Imagine having to constantly rely on friends/family to even be able to go get groceries.
Nicola alludes to this at the end without getting too political:<p>"We live at the bottom of a steep hill in a neighbourhood without sidewalks and many blocks from a bus stop. The only way for me to leave the house is in a car. Uber and Lyft have no accessible vehicles in Seattle [if they don't have it in Seattle, we can assume this also rings true for most of America]. There are a handful of wheelchair-accessible taxis but you have to book way in advance, they are obscenely expensive, and, worst of all, utterly unreliable."<p>And: "This van is insured for $91,300."<p>I'm guessing Nicola spent a long time gathering enough money to be able to gain the "luxury" of being able to move from A to B like a non-disabled person - so I am assuming moving to a highly urban setting (say, San Francisco) is financially out of the question due to the price of housing in such settings.<p>Conclusion: in our country, if you're disabled, be prepared to fork up an unreasonable amount of money to gain even a modicum of independence. By definition, this means most disabled people in this country <i>cannot</i> (financially) attain independence, and our infrastructure is the reason why.
We have a 2015 Honda Odyssey Elite (same color scheme) and I can honestly say it is the most usable vehicle we've ever owned. Awesome tech, plenty of space for the kiddos, and an unbelievable amount of storage space. It's a great ride and I'm assuming super reliable because Honda. It's fantastic to see the author gaining some freedom and mobility back with this conversion.
It's amazing to see how modern conversions work - I'm seriously impressed.<p>One of my family members has muscular dystrophy, which affects her ability to use and feel her legs. She can still walk very slowly, but she has an adapted car with hand controls. I thought I'd describe it, for those interested in the spectrum of car adaptation.<p>Her car is a standard mid-size automatic compact, with no adaptations other than a push-pull accelerator/brake hand control.<p>Unlike Nicola's car above, it doesn't have an electronic bypass for the hand controls - they're completely mechanical, with an ingenious system of sliding linkages connecting the hand lever to the pedals. The sliding links are what allows a pull on the hand lever to push the accelerator without simultaneously pulling on the brake pedal (which would obviously stop the hand lever from moving). They also allow the pedals to be used without the hand control moving, so it's easy for me to swap in to drive the car on long distance trips.
I wonder how small/efficient (and compatible with the rest of the world’s existing ecosystem without requiring special large parking spots and such, high in a city might be a big difficulty to retrofit) a purpose-built, self-driving vehicle could be. If the wheelchair doesn’t need to be in a position to drive, it would be a lot easier to fit it in a shorter wheelbase, with a less expensive mount. You would still need some greater height than a regular sedan, but probably could be narrower and load through the rear. I assume you would still want space for 1-3 other passengers. EV makes this even better — you could potentially make a city car for a wheelchair user which fit in the same footprint as a Mini Cooper.<p>Even if these were inherently more expensive, and had higher costs due to lower production runs, it might save enough on other costs to be worth it. They would also be viable paratransit or Uber model rentals (assuming self driving becomes the default) so even $200k vehicles could work. If the system were sufficiently on demand and convenient, dropping ADA from existing large buses and other transit, making them cheaper and more reliable, could potentially be a net savings.
I think that there is an opportunity for a well known electric car maker to do some wonderful things in this space, the population is ageing and nobody wants to lose their mobility.<p>One day cars will be designed for people of all abilities.