Left a paraplegic by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan two years ago, retired Marine Jack Pierce vows not to let his disability leave him in life’s slow lane.
Pierce applies that attitude to pretty much everything, including. right now, his summer vacation.
Pierce plans to drive his wife and two-year-old son a tour of national parks and monuments in their 2012 Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup, towing a fifth-wheel RV trailer specially outfitted for his needs. And tethered to the trailer will be a three-wheel motorcycle that lets him drive in his wheelchair.
“You can get out on the road and feel the wind in your hair,” says Pierce, 38, of Belton, Texas. “You’re not stuck in your house. You can get out in your RV and take your medical supplies with you.”
Wounded vets such as Pierce are a challenge for the industry that converts vehicles to accommodate people in wheelchairs or with other disabilities. After seeing sales grow for ramp-outfitted minivans to serve an aging population, converters now are having to think young.
They are using innovation and design savvy to create vehicles for a new group of customers, veterans, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, determined to live life as much as they can without concession to their disability — including in their choice of vehicles.
“Independence is the key, being able to function as normally as possible,” says Dave Hubbard, CEO of the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association trade group.
Younger buyers “are looking for alternatives,” he says, driven in large part by a desire not to be seen as disabled. They want vehicles that look like those typically driven by others their age, without obvious signs of modification to handle disabilities.
To meet those demands, a Phoenix-based minivan outfitter, for instance, has dressed up a ramp-equipped Honda Odyssey with smoked glass, custom wheels and a body kit to make it look hipper, more urban and more like a sport utility vehicle.
The disabled transportation industry also is looking beyond vans and minivans for new ways to modify any vet’s vehicle of choice with equipment needed for wheelchairs.
“The industry has been slow to respond, to tell you the truth,” says Bill Lawson of Woodward, Okla., president of Paralyzed Veterans of America. “This stuff should have been done years ago.”
Vets who like pickup trucks now can get a system with a lift chair to get them into the cab and a crane that stows their wheelchair in truck’s bed. One company even modifies a pickup with a sliding driver door and lift that lets quadriplegics drive in their wheelchairs, rather than having to shift into a truck seat.
There even are modified motorcycles:
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