What kinds of adaptations are available to help someone resume driving after a spinal cord injury?

To resume driving, it’s really dependent on the level of your spinal cord injury. So, for people with higher cervical levels, quite often you’ll need to use a minivan. And to be able to have that ability, there’s usually a ramp where the door is so that you can get into the van and drive up to specialized controls that can help compensate for any lack of hand function that you may be experiencing from the spinal cord injury. So, smaller steering wheels are important because people need them to be able to use them with their maybe somewhat weaker shoulder but be able to get the full turning radius that they need to do. The other arm is often used for gas and brake. So essentially, you’re using your arm function to replace with what you can’t do with your legs any more.

There’s generally a driver specialists in most cities who are experts in this. They take a look at different equipment that someone needs to drive. Generally after a spinal cord injury, what we’re looking at is hand controls. Instead of someone operating a car via their foot, they’re using specialized controls with their arms to be able to accelerate and use the brake. We look at different pieces of adaptive equipment that can attach to a steering wheel. If someone can’t grasp the steering wheel, they may have a special pin or a special holder that their hand can fit in to be able to steer. We also look at if somebody isn’t going to be driving but their family member is driving them, we look at different sorts of ramps and different pieces of equipment that a power chair can fit in a van. We also look if someone is a manual-wheelchair user, are they able to fit their wheelchair into the car after they may transfer into the driver’s seat?

First, you want to think about “How am I going to get into the vehicle?” So, lift systems, you can drive from your power chair, you can drive from your manual chair. Most people in a manual will do a transfer over. There are different lift systems that will take the manual wheelchair and put it into the back of the vehicle. There are different controls for the steering wheel. There’s a three-point control if you have limited dexterity in your hands. All kinds of different adaptations can be made to a vehicle, and I recommend going to and talking to a driving specialist to really go through exactly what you need.