The son of the previous owners of my dad’s van used a Permobil power wheelchair, and they had installed a Permobil-specific EZ Lock system on the floor of the van. It’s simplicity itself: there’s a bracket on the van floor; a bdocking base attached to the bottom of the power wheelchair clicks into the bracket.
Hmmm . . . maybe I should say that using it is simple. Installation is probably another matter.
An alarm system confirms when the chair is docked correctly, or warns that it needs to be re-secured. Brackets vary, depending on the type of wheelchair used, and probably require dealer installation owing to drilling, heavy-duty bolts, and electrical requirements. The bracket is released electronically, but there is a mechanical emergency release, too
EZ Lock also offers a docking system for manual wheelchairs, but I’m guessing from the illustration that stabilizing the chair sufficiently to use a dock means that it no longer folds.
One caveat: We discovered that my dad didn’t have the fine-tuning skills that would allow him to dock his power chair in this kind of base — something you’d want to consider before buying one for the chair you own. There just wasn’t any safe way for me to maneuver his power chair with him in it, so I couldn’t dock it either. We use a manual chair when he goes out. For information about how we secure it, see Buying a Used Accessible Van, Part 8 — Securing the Wheelchair.
2 replies on “EZ Lock to Secure a Wheelchair in a Vehicle”
Yes my mom purchased an EZ Lock for her van, which seemed to be very user friendly up until a couple of weeks ago. Her 1993 van was used when she bout it, and is now beginning to show it’s age. She recently had an airbag burst while at my house visiting, and as we were taking it in for repair…the lift control at the back of the van began short circuiting. This started a cascading effect on all things electrical in the car.
I guess some time last week, she had to take the van & chair in because the repairshop said the “Release” botton in the user interface needed replacing or rewiring. Everything worked fine, until yesterday when I was visiting her…I went to load her in the van, and the EZ Lock won’t engage. Has anyone run into this problem?? They don’t come with user manuals or installation guides…and it seems stupid to have to take the thing back in (45 miles away) if it’s a button to push. BUT, it looks like the “catch” mechanism is in the lock position – and the manual release lever is stuck in the “release” position. Yet, upon close inspection nothing is jammed, stuck in, or bent on the physical device. On the user interface, alarms when the car starts but when turned off…blinks red and says disabled. Release button does nothing. Turn the alarm on and the yellow light is on and the thing squeels. Help! Anyone know what to do from here??
Not sure what kind of Permobil you have but Permobil has a docking device that fits the C400 and C500 Corpus chairs and it has a retractable pin so that bolt hanging down doesn’t get caught on things works really great.