The Friendly Times

On 10 September,  The Times  ran a piece questioning the Motability scheme. It warned that “one in five new cars sold in Britain are now bought by Motability … given £2.8 billion in taxpayer cash each year.”  Read the article here It’s a dramatic claim. The picture painted is one of disabled people cruising around in luxury cars at public expense. It makes good copy. But it doesn’t match the reality. Here’s the first thing to understand. Motability doesn’t decide who qualifies. That’s the job of the Department for Work and Pensions. If the DWP awards you the mobility component of Personal Independence Payment (PIP), you can choose how to use it. One option is to put it towards a Motability vehicle. So when critics say people with “tennis elbow” or “social phobia” are getting cars, that’s not about Motability. That’s about how DWP sets the rules. Blaming the scheme for that is like blaming a shopkeeper because you don’t like who was allowed into the store. Then there’s the...

Crash, Bang, Wallop! Invacar on a trailer. In the last blog, I told you about my first attempt at driving a Tippen Delta 2 invalid carriage (Noddy) before I’d had any instruction. As you may recall, it didn’t end well. A rose bed was trampled, and a brick wall used as a brake. Driving Lesson Once I’d got the Noddy back from the repairers, I had my first driving lesson. As it turned out, it was my only driving lesson, and it took place on the estate where I lived. After explaining the basic controls, the instructor sat beside me on the floor and asked me to drive around the estate. The fact that carrying a passenger was illegal didn’t seem to bother him. The instructor then got out and explained that he wanted to test my ability to make an emergency stop. He explained that he would go and hide behind some parked cars. I should drive around, and when he jumped out and lowered his right arm, I had to perform the emergency stop. Given my driving skills and limited experience, this...