It’s not easy going through life with a disability. Fortunately, people with disabilities get an occasional privilege. One of them is the use of disabled person parking spaces. It helps make one small aspect of life a little easier.
Nonetheless, the privileges need to be respected. When taken for granted, the person doesn’t appreciate the privilege. When a person has a sense of entitlement to privileges, it leads those without them to begrudge the privileged. So even a person with challenges in life and few privileges should take care not to abuse them.
Shatney had just bought a new car, so he did not have his disabled person plates yet. But Shatney also qualifies for a disabled person placard. He could use the placard until the plates arrived. Instead, Shatney felt that having his wheelchair in the back seat and hand controls for driving entitled him to use the disabled person parking space, even though the law said otherwise.
The law says that the disabled person placard must be displayed when parking in a disabled person parking space. In fact, it says that the person must show the registration for the placard when a law officer makes the request. The law does so for a couple of reasons. One is that abuse of disabled person placards is rampant. Another is that many people have “invisible disabilities” where you cannot see that they have a disability by observing them walking from their car parked in a disabled person parking space.
There is no exception in the law for people with wheelchairs or for having hand controls in their car. If there were, some people without a disability would find yet more ways to take advantage of disabled person parking. The law protects the privilege of the driver or passenger with a disability. It should be respected by the beneficiaries of the privilege.
As for Shatney, his citation was canceled. Because he demonstrated that he had the legal right to use disabled person parking, the local police sergeant canceled the citation. That’s fair to Shatney, but it was also fair that he was cited in the first place.
Buying a van adapted for driving from a wheelchair is a costly investment. Depending on the scope of adaptations needed, the price can even run into six-figures. This is obviously not a purchase to take lightly.
Nonetheless, it can be a critical investment for a person with a disability. An adapted vehicle can provide that person with independence most people take for granted but that is otherwise unattainable for someone with a significant mobility impairment.
Considering all this, one would hope that making the purchase would go smoothly. After all, activities of daily living are challenging enough for someone with a major disability. That person would hope that their purchase is sure to be hitch free. Unfortunately, it’s not—even in the most uneventful of purchases.
First of all, at least for the initial purchase, the driver must undergo a driving evaluation given by a team that includes an occupational therapist and a rehabilitation engineer who specialize in adapted driving before even ordering a vehicle. Secondly, funding is a challenge and most traditional lenders won’t provide a loan for an adapted vehicle because of the high cost relative to the Blue Book value. Finally, the driver must have at least two fittings before delivery just to ensure the van is configured appropriately for the individual.
After all this, my most recent purchase of an adapted van went from a major hassle to my worst nightmare. I chose the same dealer from which I had purchased my prior two adapted vans, ADS Mobility. ADS had been in business for almost thirty years and had a good reputation in the industry. In my prior two purchases, the dealer did its best to provide quality service to me and they fully rectified the one accidental incident that occurred. This last purchase was a different story altogether.
First of all, ADS delayed delivery of my van for months. The owner, Chuck Kutz, fed me excuse after excuse, blaming all the delays on his suppliers. I have since discovered that all of the excuses were lies. I now speculate that what actually happened is ADS probably misappropriated the payment I made for the vehicle and did not use it to purchase the base Honda Odyssey Northstar conversion and all of the additional adapted driving equipment I require. Instead, it was probably used for ADS’s other expenses and then Kutz probably had to wait for sales to later unfortunate customers to use their payments to acquire my van and equipment over the subsequent months.
Part of the equipment that ADS contracted to install in my van was an AEVIT L Series system. This system costs well into five-figures all by itself plus thousands of dollars more to install. When I finally received my van, it had a used EGB SS electronic gas and brake system installed instead. This is an obsolete (albeit reliable) predecessor to the AEVIT system that hasn’t been manufactured since 2001 and which the manufacturer doesn’t support anymore.
The reason why ADS mangled my transaction has now come to light. The dealership went out of business and closed up shop. No other address or phone number was given to any customers for any kind of follow-up service on undelivered purchases, which happened to be the state of mine at the time. The owner has gone into hiding and is incommunicado. Fortunately (sort of), my van was abandoned at a distant Honda dealer, so I was able to retrieve it.
The van had the temporary registration vehicles have when first delivered by dealers. I checked with the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine when they would send me my permanent plates and discovered that ADS had neither processed my registration nor paid the taxes and fees. Of course, I had already paid ADS thousands of dollars to do so. Unfortunately, ADS left it up to me to process the registration and pay the taxes and fees—yet again!
Is this tale over? I hope so but it might not be. Other people who recently bought adapted vans from ADS have actually had their vans repossessed by ADS’s supplier. It turns out ADS didn’t pay its supplier for a fleet of vans and Kutz absconded with the unfortunate buyers’ monies.
ADS Mobility was QAP Accredited by the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA). This Quality Assurance Program (QAP) accredited what, in this case, turned out to be a very low quality and crooked dealership. In all fairness, the QAP is a well designed program and is a strong indicator that an accredited dealer can be relied on to deal in good faith with its customers. Nonetheless, a dealer bent on ripping off its customers can still become QAP Accredited by defrauding the NMEDA, just as it does its customers.
Buyers of adapted vehicles should not rely solely on any such indicator that their dealer will take care of them. Let this tale be a warning to act with great caution when purchasing such an expensive and critical vehicle. Before paying the dealer, try to determine what comprises the dealer’s inventory of vehicles and equipment. Try to identify your own vehicle as early as possible and verify that no suppliers have a lien on its title. And whatever you do, avoid dealing with Chuck Kutz like the plague!
My twentieth anniversary of being quadriplegic came last week and I never realized I passed it by until it was in the rear-view mirror. On the afternoon of December 3rd, 1987, I was a fit, talented athlete cross-training for the ski season with some cycling. Before the end of the ride, my body was paralyzed below the shoulders. I haven’t walked since then and my power wheelchair is the only wheeled vehicle I ride anymore.
What was once totally foreign to me has now become commonplace. Even a year or two after sustaining a complete spinal cord injury, I would still frequently wonder why such a catastrophic injury would happen to me as I would observe in wonder at the surreal circumstances I was in. In the blink of an eye, I went from a life focused on sports and other physical activities to one devoid of athletic endeavors and reliant on intellectual or professional pursuits for achievement. I had to instantaneously change my lifestyle 180 degrees to find fulfillment.
After twenty years, this lifestyle must not be so novel to me anymore. Otherwise, how could this milestone anniversary have come and gone without me taking notice? Where being quadriplegic once was something that happens to other people, I now am that other person. I’ve become so accustomed to dealing with quadriplegia that it is no longer something I must dwell on just to get through my activities of daily living.
That’s not to say life is without struggle for me. On the contrary—I face countless challenges daily just trying to do those everyday things that able-bodied people take for granted (I know this because I, too, used to take them for granted). The difference is that I now face those struggles trying to realize self-actualization whereas the struggles were then just trying to achieve the physiological and safety needs from Maslow’s hierarchy. I guess I’ve discovered that dwelling on what I cannot do only gets in the way of achieving that which I can.
In the early years of my disability, I never would have risen above the barriers I faced to become a productive member of society without the strength, support, and love of my mother. To this day, she is still my foundation and has never failed to give of anything she can to continue supporting me. The rest of my tight-knit family has given me whatever other support I have needed to fully engage in an active and fulfilling life.
The first decade of disability was dedicated to rebuilding and learning to adapt. As a high school dropout, I didn’t expect to accomplish much professionally without a degree being a quadriplegic. It took me quite a few years to get an undergraduate degree and then an MBA. In the meantime, I had to learn how to have fun without participating in some sport. It turns out that the wheelchair seating is pretty good in some venues, so concerts continued to be a frequent leisure activity for me. I could watch sports just as well paralyzed as able-bodied. Watching movies was yet another way to pass the time.
The last decade of disability has been dedicated to rejoining the workforce and developing a career. Even with the growing awareness of people with disabilities in society, this is unquestionably the greatest challenge to conquer for someone with a severe disability. Although it’s likely subconscious, there is still a surprising amount of discrimination against people with disabilities in employment. Fortunately, I have been able to encounter a handful of progressive organizations that have overlooked my physical limitations and hired me for my capabilities. I have enjoyed working in a variety of different jobs this decade that were suited to my skills and knowledge such that I have been relatively successful at making valuable contributions to my employer. Hopefully the workforce’s exposure to me has increased the odds of the next young man with a severe disability coming along looking for a job to get it.
Now I’m managing a very successful business unit for an organization. I have led it to rapid growth and through substantial development. Of course, that means I’ve been very busy so, when the twentieth anniversary of my disability came along last week, I was too busy to remember it. I suppose that’s a good thing—had I not realized the accomplishments I’ve had in spite of being quadriplegic, I’d probably be sitting around home every weekday watching TV and the milestone would instead have loomed up on me like a big cloud.
Granted, I still occasionally think that quadriplegia has made my life rather dismal in many ways. At times like that, all I have to do is think about what life would be like living in a place like Darfur or even just a hundred miles away like the slums of Tijuana to realize that I’m really quite blessed. So here I go, looking forward to the next two decades with anticipation and determination to make them better than the last two.
Check back here at the end of 2027. If I write nothing whatsoever about the fortieth anniversary of my quadriplegia, it will mean either I’ve become fully self-actualized or someone discovers the cure to spinal cord injuries.
Universal Design refers to incorporating features into a home which make it more accessible to persons with disabilities while retaining its utility and aesthetic for able-bodied residents. Unfortunately, even though the concept is that Universal Design should be equally as homey for able-bodied residents as a dwelling with no Universal Design is, it’s still rare to find housing with such features. So when a major apartment management company incorporated Universal Design into one of their units expressly for me without charging me for it, I thought the company deserves commendation for it.
The most important Universal Design feature for me is the curbless shower. It makes an act that most people take for granted, bathing, so much easier for me when I can simply roll my wheelchair right into the shower stall. The challenge is to design a curbless shower which does not appear institutional and in which a bather is just as comfortable using it standing up. Fortunately, manufacturers are now meeting that challenge.
Curbless shower
The management also removed the cabinetry from under the sinks in both the master bathroom and the kitchen so that I could get my knees under either of the sinks while seated in front of them in a wheelchair. Granted, an able-bodied resident would likely prefer cabinetry under the sink, with doors to obscure the underside of the sink. However, what makes this qualify as Universal Design is the fact that the cabinetry can easily be restored under the sink if all disabled residents were to later vacate the dwelling.
Another feature they incorporated into the kitchen is a roll-out pantry. Each shelf has rollers that allow them to be pulled out in front of where the closed doors would be. This makes the items in the pantry much easier to reach for someone seated in front of it. Regardless, able-bodied residents also find this Universal Design feature preferable to standard shelving.
There are some other Universal Design features which were not added specifically for me. They were actually added to all of the apartment units when they renovated the property where I live because they are widely desired as contemporary interior design. These are the levered door handles, the touch pad light switches, and the hardwood flooring. While the handles and switches are very helpful features for people with limited manual dexterity, they are nonetheless preferred by all tenants. The hardwood flooring is much easier to roll a wheelchair on than a carpeted floor, but the management added it to all of the units when they did the renovation because their market was demanding it.
In front of each of the doors, management built up a small concrete pad that gently slopes right up to the threshold. Blending in with the walkway leading up to the front door (or the patio out back), this inconspicuous modification makes the apartment easily accessible to smoothly rolling a wheelchair into without having to install a wood or aluminum ramp. However, this feature is also beneficial to people walking into the residence because there’s no chance of accidentally tripping over the sill of the doorway. It also makes it easier to dolly items like a refrigerator into the home.
Finally, the last accommodation that management made for me is the carpeting. In the rooms without hardwood flooring, the apartment had the carpeting typically found in rental units—light colored with a nap. This kind of carpeting is rapidly trashed by wheelchairs. First of all, the tires track dirt in much more so than shoes do, leaving stains that are very conspicuous on light colored carpeting. Secondly, they also rapidly matte down the nap in the most frequently trafficked areas, leaving wheel tracks in the carpeting. So management laid commercial carpeting like they use in the leasing office in my apartment. Its short nap doesn’t get matted and the dark, mottled coloring camouflages the dirt tracked in by the wheels. This accommodation might not qualify as Universal Design since able-bodied tenants would probably prefer the standard carpeting.
Nonetheless, it speaks to the socially responsible manner in which my apartment management company does business. While accommodating the special needs of a small cohort, they’re also using innovative Universal Design that benefits the entire population they serve. I give a tip of the hat to them.
As a hard-working, middle-class, single renter with no children, I have not qualified for the bulk of the tax breaks that Bush has carved out for the rich these past few years. My tax burden is pretty much the same now as it was when Clinton was in office—actually, it’s probably higher because my income has gone up a bit since then. Those of you who have enjoyed the good fortune of tax cuts courtesy of president Bush, don’t make the mistake of thinking that they have in any way been distributed evenly among American taxpayers.
I’ll be the first to say that it’s a good idea to ride a bike to work—especially in these days of skyrocketing gas prices. In fact, I used to ride my bike 150 to 200 miles a week just to stay fit. That’s less than the miles I commute every week for work. I love riding a bike!
However, now that I’m quadriplegic, it’s simply not feasible for me to ride a bike to work. Even if it were possible to fix a wheelchair lift to a tandem bicycle, I’m certain the federal government would not provide me with someone to pedal it for me. Of course, that last statement was silly but there’s a serious point behind it. The federal government must, by law, make all programs and services they provide equally accessible to citizens with disabilities. That includes tax breaks.
So here we are in times of record deficits and out-of-control government spending with the government trying to give Americans yet another tax break. Unfortunately, I would not get to participate in this one either. As long as the government is handing them out, I wish at least once they’d give me a tax break!
The Progressive Zone 