Driving & hand controls

[Guest guest]

Jim,

I recently purchased a minivan & had a hand control installed. I took

the advice of the folks at Adaptive Driving Systems, a local business

(in CA) which services & repairs the equipment. Mine is a Monarch

Mark

I-A made by Manufacturing and Production Services Corp. 7948 Ronson

Rd., San Diego, CA 92111 Phone . It cost $500. It does

not

get in the way of someone using the foot pedals.

For 38 years I drove a VW bug. I loved it dearly but one evening, (on

a quiet street, thank goodness,) in the process of shifting gears my

foot slipped between the clutch & brake pedals & stuck. I was wearing

AFOs & had one heck of a time freeing myself. This happened twice.

The third incident was real scary. Coming down the off-ramp from the

freeway, my foot slipped off the brake this time. You guessed it!

Between the pedals again. Luckily my husband was with me & when I

yelled he grabbed the hand brake. We skidded about 4 feet into the

intersection. Traffic was approaching but with ample time to stop.

People waited while I got my foot unstuck. That's when I went

seriously shopping for a new vehicle with automatic transmission.

My new van also has an electric ramp that slides out for my scooter.

It drives like a dream. The only problem is it drinks about twice the

gas of my VW, costs way more to insure & register.

It took me about 20 minutes to get used to the hand control.

This company also has a brake only control if you want to use yout

foot for the gas. And it can be installed for either left or right

hand use.

There are places on the Internet where these can be seen. I used

Google and searched for adaptive equipment. One site is:

http://www.abs.sdstate.edu/ae/agrability/rat/hand.html

Alice