WheelchairDriver

Having seen the automatic side lifts that come out of the side of vans, I was just wondering have these ever failed and left a disabled person stuck in their vehicle ?.

Graham

They have a hydraulic manual operated backup. So you can both go down, no effort, or up, hard work! With a lever.

the electric one that I used has manually operated contacts that will work in case of control board or remote failure or ( as happened to me several times ) a wire breaks.
I replaced part of the wiring harness with a piece of flexible appliance coiled cord - end of that problem.

also the lift had a hand crank to use if the battery failed.

but - if you are by yourself and without a phone there is the possibility you would be stranded.

an old friend got stranded using one of the first models that were sold - lucky for him his garage door was open and neighbors found him next morning.

Not a side lift, but rather a fold out ramp, however there are manual over-rides for everything in my Braun van... The door has a little strap that you can pull up to manually open / close the sliding door from the inside, and the outside handle works just like it would on a normal van. If the ramp doesn't go out like it's supposed to, giving it a good shove or tug will make it deploy. Inside the van, there is an emergency retract button that bypasses the regular computer control, and directly switches on the retract motor in order to stow the ramp. It is also possible (with significant effort) to manually fold the ramp back up.

Every once in a while the van's systems will get confused and lose track of the proper cycle, and it becomes necessary to manually work part of the cycle to get everything back in sync. I've also found that if parked on a very steep hill, the door motor isn't always strong enough to reliably open or close the door uphill w/o some extra manual assistance.

ex-Gooserider

Since 1979 I've owned four vans with a total of one ramp and four lifts.

I've never been stranded in the van but once got stranded outside my first van and had to use a ratchet to raise the list (Golden Boy) back up so I could drive home. It took me at least an hour to do so and I actually had to climb in to the van and stand on my knees while my chair was parked on the lift to do so.

I was a lot younger than, I'm not sure I could do that now.

I have read somewhere that these lifts are supposed to be weight tested every year,I don`t know if this is law or you are just advised to do it for possible insurance purposes.

Graham

Back before I got my van, I had some pretty ratty paratransits that carried me to Dr's appointments and the like - including one or two with serious lift issues that required the driver to use the manual system to get me in and out - about like using a regular hydraulic jack, slow but didn't look all that difficult, as the driver was able to pump it at a pretty good clip...

ex-Gooserider