NCD says hotel shuttles and rental car firms routinely fail wheelchair users; DOJ lacks usable complaint data

Ann Summers, director of legislative affairs and outreach at the National Council on Disability, told a July briefing that hotel shuttles and many rental‑car firms routinely fail to provide wheelchair‑accessible service and that gaps in Department of Justice data hinder enforcement.

Summers opened the sixth webinar of NCD’s ADA 30 ground‑transportation series by summarizing the report 'Ground Transportation for People with Mobility Disabilities: 2025 Challenges and Progress' and the research behind it. She said less than 4% of regions where Uber or Lyft operate offer wheelchair‑accessible vehicles and that, where available, WAV service often has worse availability, longer wait times and poorer driver behavior than service provided to other riders.

The webinar included a July 2023 public comment read by Summers describing a hotel shuttle reservation that arrived as a “giant Mercedes shuttle van with 4 steps to get in,” forcing two wheelchair users to wait in the sun and then transfer painfully into a high seat. "We ordered the accessible ride, and we didn't get it," the commenter told NCD, an episode Summers said was “emblematic” of many reports the council received.

Summers listed common shuttle barriers documented by NCD: no accessible vehicle or equivalent service offered; accessible shuttles out of operation; no available lift operator; 24‑hour notice requirements for alternative service; and driver unwillingness to assist. She noted these failures can violate the shuttle provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act when equivalent service is not provided.

On rental cars, Summers described recurring problems reserving vehicles with hand controls: reservations not honored, installers unavailable on weekends, and long advance‑notice requirements. NCD recounted an analysis by Paralyzed Veterans of America finding two‑to‑three day advance requirements at three major rental companies, which the briefing said is excessive compared with case law and research indicating an hour is a reasonable install time.

Summers summarized recent litigation that parallels the council's findings: a February 2024 class action filed in the Northern District of California accuses Hertz of limiting models offered with hand controls, excluding categories such as electric vehicles and convertibles, and imposing additional costs on renters who need hand controls.

Summers also said NCD asked DOJ’s Civil Rights Division for complaint data but was told the division receives thousands of portal complaints and “does not track disability complaints in a way that would allow it to respond to our question.” She said NCD’s review found little recent DOJ enforcement specific to shuttle or rental‑car accessibility.

NCD made three primary recommendations: that DOJ (1) vigorously enforce the ADA against private entities that fail to provide wheelchair‑accessible shuttles or equivalent service, (2) add transportation as an explicit topic on its ADA complaint webpage and improve the complaint intake system so complaints can be searched and tracked by ADA title and provider type, and (3) publish annual data on complaints broken down by title, provider type and allegation to inform enforcement strategy and policy planning.

Summers closed by urging a policy mix of legal requirements, funding and enforcement to avoid repeating the same briefing in another decade and pointed listeners to the full NCD report and webinar videos at ncd.gov. The report is available on NCD’s website; NCD said video recordings of the six‑part series will be posted there in the coming weeks.