Hi, I'm Claire and this is Craig and I'm paralyzed from the chest down. I have absolutely no movement
or sensation in my legs which means I can't drive a car like a normal person,
but that doesn't mean that I can't drive. Something we get asked a lot is whether
Craig can drive because in a lot of our videos I'm doing all the driving but that is because
Craig needs two adaptions to a car in order to be able to drive it. First of all, it needs to be
automatic which our old car was not and second he needs hand controls installed as well. So
because our old car wasn't automatic there was obviously no point installing the hand controls
but when we got this van we made sure that it was an automatic so that we can install hand controls
and Craig can now drive it. So these are my hand controls. These hand controls are connected by a
series of metal rods directly to the brake and the accelerator pedal and this means that I can
operate the brake and the accelerator from up here. So if I take this lever and push it away from me
it physically pushes down on the brake pedal in the same way that your foot would
and brakes the van and if I pull it towards me it physically pushes down on the accelerator
pedal and accelerates the van. So since I have to have one hand on these controls at all times in
order to control the speed of the van it means I only have one hand available for steering the van
so the other addition we have here is this steering ball. This steering ball is nice because it means
I can do a full rotation of the steering wheel without taking my hand off and it's much easier
for me to control. Since I have to have one hand on the wheel and one hand on the hand controls while
I'm driving it can be a little bit more difficult to operate some of the other functions of the van
stuff that's on the sticks like the indicators and the wipers are fairly easy to reach while my hands
are on the hand controls, but if I want to operate something like the radio or the lights I need to
make sure I think about this before I leave. So if I know it's going to be dark while I'm out driving
I will always turn the lights on before I leave so that they're on ready for when it gets dark.
Something that's not very easy for Craig when he's driving is thanking other drivers when they let
you pass because obviously he's got to have one hand on the wheel and one hand on the accelerator
he can't really lift the hand up to thank them so he has to do a big
nod of the head really really obviously instead. A nice feature about this van is that it has cruise
control so this means if i'm going on a motorway or something where i'm going at constant speed for
a while I can just flick it on and then I'm able to take my hand off the accelerator for a while.
So one question that we get asked quite a lot is whether having hand controls in this van
affects my ability to drive it and the answer is no it doesn't, we both drive the van which is
nice because it means we can share the driving on longer journeys which is not something that we've
been able to do for the past two years. So there are actually three ways that I can drive this van
the first way is to use the hand controls in exactly the same way that Craig does,
the second way I can drive is to use the foot pedals just like I would do in any other car and
that is probably my preferred way to drive it just because it means I can use my hands for steering
and indicating and everything without having to worry about using them for the hand controls as
well, it's just a bit easier to have two hands to do all of that, but the third way I can drive
this van is actually using a hybrid combination of both the foot pedals and the hand controls.
You don't need to press any switches or anything like that to go between the hand controls and
the foot pedals you can just do it instantly, so sometimes if I'm on a longer journey for example
and my foot gets a bit tired of using the foot pedals I can just switch straight over onto the
hand controls, give my foot a rest, stretch it out and then when I'm ready to go back onto the foot
pedals again I can just go straight back onto them just like that. So actually having hand controls in
the van is actually quite nice for me because it gives me those options to go between the two.
The one thing I will say is that the hand controls do stick out a bit underneath the steering wheel
so if you were somebody with longer legs you might find this annoying, it doesn't bother me at all.
If you've ever wondered how someone can drive without using their legs, well now you know. There
are lots of different types of hand controls but these are just the ones I use. If you've got any
questions then feel free to leave a comment. Thank you for watching and we'll see in the next one, bye!