Handicap accessible rv driver#
Handicap accessible rv series#

Handicap accessible rv driver#

Ryan D'Agostino Car and Driver THE DESIGNĮvery square inch of space in a recreational vehicle is valuable.

Handicap accessible rv series#

As it turned out, Winnebago was preparing to roll out its first-ever series of accessible RVs (this was 2019), and my family and I were able to test-drive an early version of the Adventurer AE, a 31-foot ride with a Braun platform lift. And some older people need help getting around. Not to stereotype, but I kind of always assumed that, as fun as they are for young families, RVs were perennially popular with our esteemed elder population-an ideal retirement activity. I typed every imaginable term into the search engine: 'wheelchair accessible RV,' 'adaptive RV,' 'RV for differently-abled,' 'recreational vehicles for the non-ambulatory.' It would be, we desperately hoped, a little like old times. We wouldn't need public restrooms-always a challenge-and could prepare foods and medications easily. (You can read about it here.)Īn RV is a self-contained unit that could hold all of our supplies, including the wheelchair. We had test-driven a Winnebago a few years before, and it was one of our best and most memorable family trips and one I recommend, whether you buy or rent a vehicle. The older one had an idea-he always has an idea of a place to go, or a thing to do, or a way to spend money-which was to take an RV trip. Now that the younger boy is on wheels and requires medications injected through a tube into his belly, the idea of a spontaneous weekend road trip someplace, while not impossible, often seems that way. He and his older brother would climb in the back seat of our blue station wagon, and they were always good passengers-sharing Goldfish, no one fighting about who was touching whose side of the seat. We took lots family car trips before our younger son needed a wheelchair, back in the first seven glorious years of his life. By dietary considerations most people don't have. Or by chronic pain that must be managed with medication. Whether it's jumping in the car to go for ice cream or jumping in the car to go to the beach for a week, moments of inspiration can be complicated by the addition of a wheelchair. When you or a family member is disabled, either by birth or by happenstance, one of the many privileges that can be diminished is the privilege of spontaneity.