LETTER2

Car Design for All

The report on the 'Car Design for All' Conference published in the Disabled Motorists’ Federation magazine
(’Flying Mat’ No. 74) is by far the most detailed and factual I’ve read about this important event. Most
speakers seemed to have had their wheels on the ground, but his account of messrs Rattenbury and Gloyns’s
contribution fills me with gloomy forebodings. They simply raked over the ground they covered at the Banstead
Seminar on ‘Secondary Safety of Hand Controls’ in 1994, but on this latest occasion they seem to have ignored
the economic implications altogether.

Perhaps Peter Gloyns has decided, on mature reflection, that his former idea of sharing the inflated cost of ‘safer’
adaptations equally between the state, the manufacturer and the user borders on the visionary. Compared with Dr. Gloyns,
Screaming Lord Such is a hard-headed Yorkshire pragmatist.

It’s so easy for people in his position to dismiss cost as being of secondary importance to safety. He is neither
footing the bill, nor is he exposed to the risks. My first passenger-carrying motor cost me (new) about Ł350. It
cost a further Ł35 to have it fitted with cumbersome cable-operated vacuum powered adaptations so that I could drive it.
Thirteen years later, when I was at last affluent enough to replace it, inflation had boosted its nearly identical successor
(also new) to over Ł3,000 but the hand controls, of the (then new) trusty all-mechanical variety, cost only Ł60.

In simple terms, adaptation represented 10% of the capital cost of my first motor but less than 2% of my second.
Each set of adaptations did exactly the same job, yet the simplification of their design & fitment over the intervening
years reduced the cost-of-disabled-living premium by 80%. At a conservative estimate, with allowances for inflation and
interest, my minimalist adaptations have saved me around Ł12,000 over an independent motoring life of 36 years. People
have received less for the loss of both legs in accidents.

Doctors Rattenbury & Gloyns, and all who are tempted to follow their lead, need a compulsory course in cost benefit analysis, such as only disabled living can provide.

Yours &etc., 'TRon'