Coming to America - hand controls

[Deleted]

Hi everyone,

Hubby and me are organising a trip to las vegas and a bit of a tour round to the Grand Canyon and Monument valley. Does anyone know if it is possible to hire a car with handcontrols added? Does it cost the earth? Also how assessibe is the grand canyon and monument valley? Really excited by the prospect as we have wanted to see those places for ages.

[nordic]

I was in Florida and Texas with my family almost 15 years ago. We needed a special accessible van with enough space for a power chair and some other equipment. My mother just contacted a car rental and they were very helpful with organizing everything, so that might be a good place to start for you as well. Rental not more expensive than any regular van. When it comes to accessibility I got the impression that, especially compared to Europe, there were barely any places that I could not access with ramps, elevators or something similar. Don't they have some kind of tourist information for Grand Canyon that you could give a call to check? Or maybe somebody else on here knows it from personal experience.

[Deleted]

Luckily hubby doesn't need a assessable car just the hand controls. I assume that it is fairly assessable as swagger and kida went there but was just wondering.

[lookingfor]

Does he have portable hand controls? Those would probably be your best bet. Some rental agencies may offer them as an add on, or if you know someone who had some lying around, you might be able to borrow/rent them somewhere. We really enjoyed to Grand Canyon, and want to go back sometime. If you go any further west than Vegas, let us know! We're only about 3 hours from Vegas!

[cesareo]

More than once I rented a car with Hertz in the United States. they mount hand controls (right or left) on any car available, if I remember correctly, the service is free.
Hello from Italy! Cesare

Ps: The reservation whit the hand controls is possible on the Hertz site

[Deleted]

Thank you will check out the Hertz site tonight. Lookingfor - thank you, we are in the early planning stages

[spurs2000]

Hi TC, as far as I can remember there are some specialist rental firms in both California and Vegas. I researched it quite a number of years ago when looking for a wheelchair accessible vehicle and remember seeing hand controls as an option. I probably saved the link somewhere that if you search the Internet you should come across the same.

[Emma]

We have rented two cars with hand controls. All the major car rental companies offer hand controls at no additional cost. Unless you really want to fight with them you will end up paying a bit more since they only put them in the larger cars and renting a larger car costs more. The thing to remember is you need to let them know ahead of time. You can't just show up at the rental car place and expect to get a car with hand controls. I just called them and made a reservation and it was no problem. PM me if you want more details.

Oh and Las Vegas is super accessible but I don't know about the other places since I haven't been but expect anything that is a national park to be pretty good.

[Deleted]

Thanks Spurs and Emma, not to worry about the advance notice as we are getting our plans together for next September. But we went to book a package tailored a bit as we didn't want to rent a car to just sit in the hotel car park for ten days, we only wanted it to journey out for about five days. They said that the company wouldn't deliver it to the hotel and we would have to go back to the airport when we want the car which isn't really what we want to have to do during the holiday so we are thinking of taking out that component of the holiday and booking up the car seperately. Hubby will do a bit of research but thanks to your posts I am feeling a lot happier about it. You really wouldn't want to see me on your roads out there. I have tried it but just couldn't adapted my brain to driving on the wrong side of the road. Perhaps you guys could change that just of the duration of my visit? I am fine if it is a straight highway but don't ask me to get off it and especially when the off ramp is in the MIDDLE of the highway.

[cripple farmboy]

Most rental car companies will install them if you just ask. However, sometimes they forget too. Ive been on the shitty end of that a few times.

Get a set of these www.sportaid.com/z4-portable-hand-control.html
They fit in a suitcase and come in handy when traveling.

[MarineAmp]

If you're renting a car I would definitely take advantage of the hand controls they install. My parents bought me a pair of portable hand controls because they heard it was a good idea to have them, which it kind of is. However I think they suck, I wouldn't trust them in heavy traffic where you might need to brake suddenly. If you need them then they are nice to have, but if you're renting make them earn their pay check.

[alf]

I will second Mrbb and Marineamp.

I was in the States last year and bopth on the East Coast and the West Coast did I rent a car from Hertz with hand controls, like I'd done in the past.

I did have a problem in NYC where they had mounted a left hand control on the right hand side and I ended up having to drive with it upside down since I didn't have time to wait ½ a day to leave town since I was going to see a certain someone, and driving around like that really, really sucked!

In Seattle my car broke down and but I was immediately provided with a new one (upgraded, naturally) with the hand controls in place when I reached the lot in a tow truck.

So I've had good and bad experiences with it. But all in all, it is so much easier renting a car where the hand controls are already installed than anything else - provided you're renting anyway.

[roger888]

I want to thank everyone for all the useful information on this thread.Its pointed me in the right direction on how to solve the problem of going on holiday away from mainland Britain when I haven't been too enthusiatic with driving to the nearest ferry port.

I should have realised that the major car rental companies cater provide cars with hand controls these days,but I haven't done any research on it.I don't have to now because of PD users helpfullness.

[Deleted]

Oct 6, 2012 5:27:46 GMT -5 alf said:

I will second Mrbb and Marineamp.

I did have a problem in NYC where they had mounted a left hand control on the right hand side and I ended up having to drive with it upside down since I didn't have time to wait ½ a day to leave town since I was going to see a certain someone, and driving around like that really, really sucked!

How romantic lol, not quite battling dragons for your lady.

Thank for all your posts, it gave us a lot more confidence to not go with the package company and we probably will go with Hertz as the hand controls are free and you can pick up the cars at Cezar's Palace. We booked it up today, we love booking holidays way in advance as there is nothing like it when you have a bad day at work and you can dream about your holiday. So it is four nights at MGM, three nights doing monument valley, two nights at Grand Canyon and remaining five at the Bellagio Sorry if I've spelt them all wrong. The Bellagio has always been a dream for us as we stayed before at the Stardust in 2004, and had a go at the lift in the Bellagio, to be honest I would just sleep inthere, the most poshest lift I have ever seen. So you may ask yourself, is she going to gamble, is she going to see a show, the lights, the volcano. No...... she is going to do a tour of elivators. ;D

[spurs2000]

It sounds an awesome trip will be had!