When it comes to being able to get around town or travel over longer distances than just around the corner to the stores, or to visit local friends, one of the most popular means apart from regular public transports that is specially adapted for wheelchair access is using one of the specially manufactured handicap vans. There are many advantages to doing this as we shall see in this article on the uses and benefits of these vehicles.
Specially adapted or manufactured vans that are able to easily transport wheelchair users around the place are a boon to mobility issues faced by people with disabilities. These vehicles have wide access doors and electrically operated handicap ramps to raise and lower wheelchair users in and out of the vans, along with specially engineered seating that users can either transfer into from the wheelchairs, or lock the wheelchairs in place so the user can make the journey without having to get out of their wheel chair.
In this news article in the Huffington Post, reporter Loraine Boyle wrote of her own experiences when her Achilles tendon ruptured and she found herself plunged into the world of the handicapped, albeit temporarily for six weeks. She went from silently cursing the public transport bus that stopped for wheelchair users and the additional time it took for the driver to get out of the bus, open the rear access doors to the bus, operate the handicap ramp so the wheelchair user could get in, then set the wheelchair locked in place for the journey before finally returning to his own seat and continuing to drive the bus and its occupants on to teh next stop.
Why, she wondered, didn’t the City lay on special handicap vans for the wheelchair-bound travelers and let the rest of the passengers get to where they were going faster? But experiencing what it was like to have to live the life of a person with disabilities, she gained a useful insight into what it was like to ahve to wait around for a vehicle to come pick you up and all the hassle that goes with it.
Sure, a fleet of handicap vans would solve that problem while providing a better and more dignified service to wheelchair users. Unfortunately, something like that would cost money and most city budgets don’t stretch that far. Maybe some of the city politicians that take a huge slice of that budget for their expense accounts might forgo their perks that they don’t really need (in this blogger’s opinion, they make far too much money for the jobs they do in any case) and put that money to better use?