NMEDA highlights safety with new listing

TAMPA, Fla. - The National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association has published an online listing of vehicle conversions that it has reviewed for compliance with applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

The listing, available at www.nmeda.com/SafetyReviewedVehicles, helps the association's dealer members and their customers feel confident about their wheelchair accessible vehicles, says Danny Langfield, CEO of NMEDA.

“The idea is, let's give manufacturers the opportunity to prove they crash test their vehicles, and let's give dealers the assurance that the vehicles they sell are crash-worthy,” he said.

To build the listing, NMEDA and the engineers in its Compliance Review Program took the data that any manufacturer self-submitted on vehicle conversions and shared it with a third party for review. If the data met standards, the association added the vehicle conversion to the listing.

NMEDA has required its manufacturer members to submit this type of data for three years now, but the listing challenges all manufacturers to follow suit, Langfield says. The listing also makes the data more widely available and in a more user-friendly format.

“It's friendly pressure,” he said. “Wouldn't it just be better to be on this list?”

To up the ante, starting July 1, NMEDA will begin requiring its Quality Assurance Program-accredited dealer members to only sell vehicles that are on the listing.

“We really wanted to ring the bell on this,” Langfield said.

Chad Blake, president of the Ability Center, which sells wheelchair accessible vehicles, mobility vans and mobility products in California, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon, says the listing serves as an “excellent guide” for his company's goal of providing only safe and reliable vehicles.

As for the new upcoming requirement: “We will continue to only sell new conversions that have been independently reviewed for safety,” said Blake, also president of NMEDA's board of directors.