Building a More Accessible Future of Mobility | Alan Hejl, Founder of Spark Access

So one, let me just validate.

I'm very interested in the industry because you think oftentimes about autonomous vehicles and you think Tesla, you think the Google machines rolling around, you see these new little widgets all around town driving people around.

But even then, you see the value of the transportation, but I never even thought about the accessibility of it.

How does it work and how are things really progressing in your opinion moving on from the, hey, this thing can... stay within the barriers and autobrake versus, hey, we've got autonomous vehicles driving around town, picking people up, bringing them to work, taking them places.

Yeah, that's a really great and thoughtful question.

Maybe to preface it with another small advocacy story that it's another building block that led to me understanding the future of mobility was to go back to a ride share experience we had.

And this was maybe back in, I think it was 2015 or so.

Uber and Lyft still hadn't hit full efficiency in the Metro Detroit area.

But my wife and I, we were in the Bay Area visiting some friends and it was a classic drizzly day in the Bay Area.

And we were on the side of the road and wet.

and waiting for an Uber to come pick us up.

Our driver comes up and then just speeds up and keeps going.

And then a second one pulled up, rolled down their window and said that the wheelchair couldn't get in his vehicle because it would get his car dirty.

Good luck getting another driver.

And so he declined the ride and rematched us again.

And then we had another drive by for that third ride.

We devised a tactic where my wife hid around the corner.

And then I was just the guy with the bags waiting for Uber to come pick us up.

And then as soon as he pulled up, I threw all of our bags in and then she came out.

And luckily this driver was also really nice.

So we probably didn't have to ambush driver number four.

And everybody was saying rideshares the way of the future, taxis are dead.

But then we found out who is this for? Is it including everybody in this vision of it's a multi-billion dollar industry.

It's getting all this venture capital investment.

Yet they excluded people with disabilities from the start and even still today struggle with its policies of anyone who uses a service dog.