Wheelchair Watchdog

The strange and terrible Braun Entervan wheelchair van saga starts here and ends with Braun recalling over 4000 Toyota Sienna Entervan wheelchair vans! Inspiration for this blog arrived as a result of researching wheelchair accessible vehicles and handicap van manufacturers. It didn't take long for me to realize that this all important facet of disabled life is rife with problems ranging from outright safety issues (that are apparently swept under the rug and unregulated), to an appalling lack of customer service on the part of companies that sell wheelchair vans. It has to be said, while this particular post is solely about Braun Corporation, I'm in the process of investigating other manufacturers and dealers as I've apparently touched on something. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, the amount of information I uncovered about Braun is nothing short of appalling. It began with a post I saw on the Wheelchair Forums message board regarding the failed fuel integrity crash testing of a Braun Entervan, a popular wheelchair van http://www.wheelchairforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46 . The video itself is located on YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=css25cMG9-0 . Braun Corporation has long been regarded as the "General Motors" of the mobility industry and is a huge company that manufactures wheelchair vans and handicap accessible vehicles, encompassing both the commercial and private sectors. The posting of this video shows a Braun Entervan failing a fuel integrity crash test. The poster mentioned that Braun apparently refuses to show their crash test data and this started me thinking.....why? I called Ride-Away, a Braun wheelchair van retailer and talked with a salesperson. As they were overall relatively friendly, I'll spare them the embarrassment of mentioning their name, but in the course of the conversation I requested a copy of the Entervan crash test data as a tool to help me make a buying decision. The salesperson immediately began backtracking as they obviously didn't have access to it. I then asked if they'd seen it themselves and after a pause he answered "I think so....um, oh yes, I've seen them. Definitely. It's a very safe accessible van". Hmmm. After locating the original video posting on YouTube, I read the description and found that the poster had what sounded like a similar experience. There was also links to a Braun recall of 657 wheelchair vans for another fuel system issue where a hose was breaking and pumping gas underneath the drivers seat!!! See that here http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/problems/recalls/recallresults.cfm?start=1&SearchType=QuickSearch&rcl_ID=06V050000&summary=true&PrintVersion=NO .
The icing on the cake came recently when discussing a wheelchair van with an acquaintance that works at a Toyota Dealer. Braun makes an accessible Toyota Sienna wheelchair van and is apparently officially recognized by Toyota Mobility ( http://www.toyota.com/html/mobility/rampvan.html ) and their accessible Toyota Sienna Braun Conversion can be purchased through Toyota dealers. According to the Toyota employee, Toyota Corporate recently sent out a Braun recall notice of 4000 Braun Converted wheelchair accessible Toyota Siennas for issues with their "rear axle beam mounting brackets", i.e. what holds the rear wheels on! This was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back for me and prompted me to start this blog. Ask yourself, if Braun Corporation, the largest manufacturer in North America of wheelchair van and handicap accessible vehicles, has this many safety issues with several different models of their wheelchair accessible vehicles and vans, WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE?!?! What other products, like the Entervan, geared for the disabled community have major safety or quality issues that merely get swept under the rug?!?! My contact at Toyota emailed me a scanned copy of the recall memo (see image) and I searched for info about the wheelchair van recall on the NHTSA website but couldn't find anything. I then called them and was informed that because Braun was doing a "voluntary recall" of the 4000+ plus Braun Toyota Siennas handicap accessible vans, they probably wouldn't be posting any record of it on the NHTSA recall website, nor did they have any record of it at all! This just seems wrong! (This info was recently published by NHTSA and can be found by searching here http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/recalls/recallsearch.cfm ).I encourage all of you out there to start looking at the big picture regarding the products we purchase and utilize! While I'm definitely not interested in creating some kind of mass hysteria, I firmly believe that an informed public is the only way to initialize change and improvement. If a product as important and fundamental as a wheelchair van has this many issues, what else is out there? Apparently, as the consumer, the responsibiltiy lies with us as there appears to be little regulation or disclosure from the manufacturers. I encourage you to put on your detective hats and help make the world safer for us all......feel free to send comments to wheelchairwatchdog@yahoo.com
Watchdog!





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