Page 20 - Mobility Management, February 2017

In the Driver’s Seat
place of the previous regime, which was no standard. It was sort of a wild west: Send them to the cheapest bidder with no regard for training, facilities, experience, expertise, abilities.
“Now there will be certain requirements in place, but it’s not going to be to the level of NMEDA QAP. A benefit for our members is if you are NMEDA QAP, you will meet or exceed whatever standard is eventually developed by VA. The only providers who will run into any sort of trouble adhering to the yet-to-be-developed standards are ones who don’t have appro- priate facilities or choose not to train their employees in basic electric [work], or don’t use what is largely considered to be appropriate equipment, things of that nature.”
While NMEDA won’t be supplying verbatim the quality stan- dards that VA uses, Schoppman says the association definitely wants to be among those supporting the development process.
“We’re a little uncertain of what the timeline is going to be, but sometime in 2017, VA will release a proposed rule as mandated by the VMSA,” she says. “And that will include the quality standards for the equipment, the safety standards for the installations. There were also included standards for employees at VA who are helping to run and administer the program. There’s a require- ment for an annual report. So there are a lot of details that still need to be worked out.”
NMEDA anticipates that VA will call a “stakeholders’ meeting” that could include “vehicle modification experts, veterans groups,
adaptive technology professionals, rehab representatives, perhaps disability or aging groups, and of course ADED [Association
for Driver Rehabilitation Specialists] on behalf of the CDRS [Certified Driver Rehabilitation Specialist] community.”
After that, VA is expected to develop and release a proposed rule, to be followed by one or more comment periods and possible revisions before the final rule is released.
Schoppman described this portion of the process as “more detailed, less political work.” But even while working directly with Congress — Schoppman and her NMEDA colleagues visited the Capitol Hill offices of all 535 members of Congress in 2016 — she noted that the idea of automobile adaptive standards for VA earned bipartisan support.
“I think our co-sponsors were pretty much split down the middle, 50/50,” she says. “But I think also generally, no matter how hard someone or some organization might try to make
it, this is not a partisan issue. Accessibility and access to safe, quality vehicle modifications doesn’t appeal to Democrats more than Republicans or vice versa. I think most reasonable people agree that these sorts of services should be available to people, you should use quality equipment, the installation should be safe, and if the federal government is using tax payer funds to operate a program specifically for automotive adaptive equipment, there should be standards for that.”
2017 Federal & State Agendas
Another major issue for NMEDA and its membership also concerns VA — namely, getting paid in a timely manner for automotive work
Autonomous Vehicles: Along for the Ride
There are many applications for autonomous automotive vehicles that, in simple terms, “drive themselves,” and people with mobility-related disabilities could be among the consumers to benefit most.
While adaptive automotive equipment such
as hand controls and wheelchair securement
systems already make it possible for many
wheelchair users to drive (and automotive
ramps and lifts enable them to ride as passengers),
adding autonomous vehicles to the mix could offer
independent mobility to an even greater range of consumers.
Imagine a parent with very high-level quadriplegia, for instance, being able to participate in the neighborhood carpool on school days. Or a college student with cerebral palsy and severe tone issues being able to get to school via his own car.
No more waiting at bus stops in severe weather. No more booking rides with shared-ride systems that can be overwhelmed with high volumes of calls. No more needing to hope that a cab or ride-share driver won’t be scared off by the idea of transporting a consumer plus a wheelchair and possibly a service animal.
The promise of commercially available autonomous vehicles is enormous, but as with any emerging technology, the landscape is also filled with questions, as well as a sense of urgency so that the many and complex perspectives of people with disabilities are included as early as possible in decision-making processes.
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Chuck Hardy, NMEDA’s VP of quality assurance and compliance, says the organization composed of dealers, manufacturers, service providers and driver rehabilitation clinicians is already working
to be front and center on this issue.
“We’ve been given the green light to form a task force to look at autonomous vehicles and
how they’re going to impact our industry and
what kind of influence we can have,” he says, adding that the main goal is “to make sure we
have a voice in the whole process. We want to be on the front end of this.”
It’s a topic sure to be discussed at the annual NMEDA conference, to be held Feb. 14-16 in Daytona Beach, Fla.
“Right now, the challenge has been finding out who has been involved in the efforts and how we can get involved,” says Hardy, who says he has spoken, for instance, with a university whose rehab science school would also like to participate. “Like any competitive industry, there are a lot of people keeping quiet.”
Ultimately, NMEDA would like to be intimately involved in the auton- omous vehicle realm to ensure the voices of its members and consumers with mobility-related disabilities are accurately and well represented.
“We’re trying to figure out who’s got their hands in the pot right now, so we can figure out — can we join the board, can we be on an advisory panel?” Hardy says. “We don’t want to see the industry evolve without some input from the adaptive community.” l
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