What would Jake Sully Drive

At one point during the discussion of my therapy my doctors raise the issue of driving a car with hand controls. I would, of course, need to use a car with hand controls because my feet are no longer functional. Their jaws dropped when that when I said that I had already driven a car with hand controls and thus knew what was involved.

The story goes back to six months before my accident when I tore my Achilles tendon playing racquetball. I felt as if somebody had hit me in the back of my leg. It would later turn out that this is the most common description of somebody who has had their Achilles tendon rupture. It took about a week including several calls to my doctor my wife and another nurse practitioner before finally my wife correctly diagnosed the problem as a torn Achilles tendon. None of the providers seem to believe that I was able to hobble around while my Achilles tendon was completely broken.

I walked into the office of the orthopedic surgeon and announced that I probably had a torn Achilles tendon. I told my story. His response was to turn to the resident and say "this is exactly what the presentation of  torn Achilles tendon is like."

After the surgery I was in a cast and on crutches for a couple months. Because the surgery was on my right foot I was unable to drive during this period. This was a large handicap but I could count on the services of my wife to get me where I needed to go. Unfortunately, several weeks after I was put in the cast Verna was offered a job in Richland on the other side of the Cascades. My initial response was "no you can't go, you're my transportation".

Then I got to thinking… "Suppose I was paraplegic. Suppose I flew into a new city. I would, of course, want to rent a car and someone would be able to rent something that I could drive. My line was "What would Jake Sully drive?

Jake Sully is the protagonist in the movie Avatar and is a paraplegic.

So I called up Enterprise Rent a Car and asked whether it was possible to rent a car with hand controls.Their response was "When you need it?". Several days later I showed up and they gave me keys to a car with and controls. I had, of course,no idea or rather very little idea of how to drive a car with an controls, I drove VERY CAREFULLY around the parking lot about four times before I felt confident enough to VERY SLOWLY get out on the street and drive home by the least used route.

So what are hand controls? Hand controls consist of a bar which is mechanically hookedto the brake and gas pedals of the car. Moving the bar down mechanically pushes the gas pedal. Moving the bar away from you, toward the front of the car causes the brake pedal to be pushed. The connection to the brake pedal is shown below.

 

So learning to drive with hand controls consists of doing with one hand no exactly what you would with 1 footIt takes a little practice, but within a day or twoYou are not even thinking about what you were doing.