Disabled Motoring UK - Disabled Motoring UK is the charity for disabled drivers, passengers & Blue Badge holders.

Paris

The weather was swelteringly hot as we entered the French capital. Paris is famous for wide boulevards, chic fashions and iconic landmarks. What usually isn’t mentioned by the tourist board is the collective insanity of the drivers; stationary or in motion, they jockey for position, using the horn both as a brake and a warning. Continue reading »

The Alps Challenge is underway and our team are blogging live as the journey continues.

Keep in touch on our dedicated Alps Challenge page.

Dan McIntyre, Ade Adepitan and CEO Graham Footer at the launch of the challenge

In stark contrast to the balmy evening that we encountered last night, the Alps Challenge team awoke to a dreary grey Sunday morning, fresh from thunder storms the night before. Thanks to a tight schedule, we were on the road at 0600. An example of the extreme hardship that the team is undergoing is the fact that we couldn’t find anywhere open for coffee for a full two hours. While the others seemed perky enough, your correspondent moved in a torpid, zombie like state until the coffee stop. In addition to great roads and an obsession with baguettes, the French are blessed with superior roadside coffee . Continue reading »

The end of the first day..

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Want to get back into driving? Andrew Dalton, Information Officer at The William Merritt Disabled Living Centre and Mobility Service, explains how a mobility centre could help get you back in the driving seat.

Having a limb injury or illness that has stopped you driving can have a big impact on your mobility and quality of life. But with a bit of help you may be able to return to the wheel. At The William Merritt Disabled Living Centre and Mobility Service in Leeds we offer a Mobility Service that can assess your ability to drive and recommend adaptations to make it easier and safer.

Our aim is to help people get back on the road if possible, and to help people drive safely. Being able to drive again can open many doors. If driving is not for you we can also help make getting into and out of cars as a passenger easier. Continue reading »

Suselle Boffey  tells us about her early adventures with her mother, who inspired Suselle’s lifelong love of travel.

My mother was quite an unusual person.  From an early age, she bucked the trend – a trait she probably inherited from her father, who chose to follow a professional career and so alienated his family of traditional Jewish business-people.  Mum’s own mother was absent for most of Mum’s life (she was sent to a distant psychiatric hospital when Mum was seven years old). As a result, Mum’s upbringing was left to her dad and the housekeeper. Perhaps it’s not surprising that she followed her own thoughts and ideas as she grew up, developing an enquiring mind and a passionate curiosity about the world.  Even in the early 1950s – still a period when convention and tradition ruled, she chose to go into nursing and to hitchhike across France and Germany with her nursing friends! Continue reading »

Information Officer Marta Bartosiewicz goes back to basics and explains the different aspects of motor insurance.

In this day and age you can insure pretty much anything and it is up to you if you want to be protected in case of an unfortunate incident. However, when it comes to motor insurance people who drive a motor vehicle have a legal obligation to obtain at least a minimum cover.

With so many different companies bombarding us with endless choices and potential savings, many people can be confused and unsure what cover is best for them. Jargon and the sheer volume of information can be intimidating to say the least.

However, it is critical to get a cover to suit your needs as many people (including some members of Mobilise) get caught unaware every year. Continue reading »

UPDATE: For information on the memorial tribute to O A Denly, please click here.

It is with great sadness that Mobilise has to announce the death of our founder and president, Oswald Arthur Denly, known to many of us as “Denny”. He died at the age of 86.

O A Denly was born in 1924 in London, and entered the Royal Navy in 1942. He contracted polio whilst in Ceylon and returned to the UK in 1945. Paralysed from the waist down, he was invalided out of the navy and became a hospital administrator. The expectation of many might have been that Denny’s adventuring days were firmly behind him, but the handsome 22-year old thought differently. He had planned to spend his first Foreign Service leave in Switzerland and saw no reason to change his plans despite his disability. In June 1947 he set off to conquer the Alps in his 147cc petrol-driven Argson tricycle, or “Invalid Carriage”. His was to take him 1,500 miles over the Alps, including a climb of almost 8,000 feet through steep mountain passes. Continue reading »

Mobilise member Jenny Banbury loved her manual Renault Clio but there was no way she could fit a hoist and a scooter inside such a small car, and she needed an automatic for the hand controls she required.  Her only option was to get something bigger and after much soul searching she settled on the Vauxhall Zafira 1.9 CDTI.

I had been having driving lessons with Rob Lukehurst (in his BSM Corsa with hand controls), and my Disability Living Allowance award letter had come through.  The time had come to look for a car.  I went to see Andrew Vernon, the Motability Specialist at Hartwell Oxford Vauxhall, for advice on what car he thought might be suitable.  I’d been to many dealers and didn’t like the look or space the other cars offered.  I was also fixated on having a small car.

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In this article from 2008, Sally Roe reported on the disabled motorists competing in the first UK karting championship using hand controls.

The Disabled Karting Championship team

Recently Helen and I were invited by Mobilise member Kumar Moorthy to attend the ‘Disabled Karting Championship’ at Cannon Raceway in Birmingham, to have a go on the adapted karts and to meet some of the drivers and organisers working to make this fantastic sport accessible to all.

Kumar is the brains behind the Disabled Karting Championship, and in 2006 he persuaded Keith Jauncy, the owner of Cannon Raceway, to pay for ten of his karts to be converted into hand controls. Since karts have no gears, the controls consist of a fairly rugged push-pull accelerator / brake lever, which leaves the other hand free to steer the kart. Continue reading »