Page 25 - Mobility Management, March 2019

already an obstacle for many wheelchair users, with four of five users reporting to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research that their local public transportation is difficult to use or even get to. But as challenging as current public transportation is, a person with experience and training is available to assist a wheelchair user in securing their wheelchair if they can’t do it themselves. What if there is no driver to assist?
Schoppman considers a stable of questions: “Are we taking into consideration individuals who have what are typically referred to as high-level disabilities? And if a high-level quadriplegic in a power chair wants to on-demand order an autonomous vehicle, how do they interact with the application if they don’t have use of their hands? How do they enter and exit the vehicle if they cannot wheel them- selves up a ramp? How can we ensure that their personal mobility devices are appropriately and safely secured within the vehicle?”
To this end, NMEDA has been able to make inroads with members of Congress who will be responsible for determining the regulations and exemptions for this technology. The SELF DRIVE Act (H.R. 3388), introduced in the House in July 2017, sought to establish the federal government’s role in ensuring the safety, development and deployment of self-driving cars. It also included very specific language regarding accessibility: “DOT
[Department of Transportation] must ... establish the Highly Automated Vehicle Advisory Council to, among other things, develop guidance regarding mobility access for the disabled, elderly, and underserved populations.”
The SELF DRIVE Act passed the House in September 2017, but it died in the Senate under the newly titled AV Start. Still, Schoppman sees this as a success because it’s a real move in the right direction toward starting a serious conversation about accessibility and smart technology. “What we wanted to do with both of those bills, and we were successful in both the House and the Senate, was to ensure that language was included,” Schoppman explained. “It’s really
a first step to ensuring that public transportation and privately owned autonomous vehicles, whether they’re for personal use or ride shares or some kind of on-demand service, are accessible and safe for American seniors and people with disabilities.”
The Problem of Infrastructure
Even if the technology itself could accommodate people with disabilities, there is still the problem of infrastructure. “The
roads to which those vehicles would be exposed are not currently prepared from an infrastructure standpoint to accommodate autonomous vehicles,” Schoppman said. “The testing they’re doing is conducted on private tracks. It’s usually in good weather,
Untitled-8 1
MOBILITY MANAGEMENT | MARCH 2019 23
MobilityMgmt.com
2/7/19 2:22 PM
See us in Booth 316 at the International Seating Symposium