EMSON Car Cane vs Vive Car Handle: Which One to Keep in the Door

The first time I watched my husband Gene try to get out of the passenger seat of our sedan, I was standing in a church parking lot with my hand out like a crossing guard. He took it. He pulled. He sat back down. Three tries, and by the third one my left knee, the one I had replaced four years earlier, was hollering at me. Gene is seventy four and his right hip is the trouble. I am seventy one. We own one car, a four door sedan, and until that Sunday morning I had never once thought about how the two of us were going to keep getting out of it.

The short answer: the EMSON Car Cane is the one that stayed in our car, and it is the one I would buy again. It comes two to a pack, it seats in the U shaped latch on the door frame, and it gives you something solid to push against instead of hauling on the arm of the person next to you. The Vive Car Handle does the same basic job. I want to be straight with you about this part. I never bought one. I handled one at a mobility shop on the east side of Dayton on a Tuesday in March, and I read the listing more than twice. So this is a comparison between a handle I have used for eighteen months and one I have held for ten minutes, and I will tell you which is which every time it matters.

	EMSON Car Cane	Vive Car Handle
What's in the box	Two handles, so both front doors get one	One handle, so a second door means a second order
Where it seats	Slides into the U shaped latch on the door frame	Fits the same latch point on the frame
Light	Built in LED, batteries included	None on the model I handled
Emergency tools	Seatbelt cutter and window breaker built in	None
Things to maintain	Batteries to swap now and then	Nothing to change and nothing to charge
Bulk in the door pocket	16 ounces, 8 inches by 2 inches	One plain grip, no light housing on the end
Getting in versus getting out	Helps you rise out of the seat, not pull yourself in	Same limit
Best for	A household with two drivers and one car	One driver who wants the simplest thing that works

Two things about that table before we go on. A tie is a real answer. Half of what a car handle does is simply be in the door latch, and both of these do that. And I am not going to run down the Vive just because I chose the other one. It is a plain handle that does a plain job, and there are people reading this who are better served by plain.

Where the EMSON Car Cane Wins

The two pack is why I bought it and why I would buy it again. Gene gets out of the passenger side and I get out of the driver's side, and one handle cannot be in both doors at once. Ours live in the door pockets, his on the right, mine on the left, and nobody has to remember to carry anything from one side of the car to the other. Before this I tried a cushion on the passenger seat, on the theory that if Gene sat higher he could swing his legs out easier. All that did was make the seat taller and the drop to the pavement longer, and we gave up on it after two Sundays. If you drive alone, that second handle is a spare, and I say so again further down. If there are two of you, it is the difference between solving the problem and solving half of it.

The build is the second thing. The listing rates it to 350 pounds, gives it as forged steel with a soft, nonslip grip, and lists it at 16 ounces and 8 inches by 2 inches. That last number is the one that surprised me. It is small enough that I did not have to rearrange a single thing in the door pocket to make room. Gene's hands are not strong. He can close his fist around the grip and push, the grip does not slide in his hand even in July when everything in that car is slick, and it works the same in either hand, which mattered because his cane lives in his left. The first week I kept taking it out and putting it back to see whether it would rattle loose on the road. It seats with a slide, the way the listing says, and it has never come out on its own, not on the rough stretch of Smithville Road where the car shudders, and not on the highway at speed.

The light and the cutter are the parts I did not think I needed and still have not needed, eighteen months on. I use the light maybe once a month to find the keyhole when I park somewhere dim. The seatbelt cutter and the window breaker are built into the handle and I have never touched either one, and I hope I never do. What I will say is that they cost me nothing in weight or fuss, and there is a certain peace of mind in a thing in your door pocket being more than a handle. The batteries came with it. We have not changed them yet.

Where the Vive Car Handle Wins

Nothing to maintain is a real advantage and I am not going to talk around it. The Vive is a plain grip. No light, no cutter, no batteries, nothing to switch on and nothing to go dead on you in a cold February car. My father in law kept a flashlight in his glove box that was dead for the last six years of his driving life. If you are the sort of person who will not remember to swap batteries, a tool that needs none is the better tool for you, no matter what else it does. That is not a small thing. The clerk at that shop told me it was their steadiest seller and that most people bought it and never thought about it again, and after holding it I could see why.

The second Vive advantage is size and simplicity. One plain grip takes up less room in a door pocket than a handle with a light housing on the end, and it is easier to explain to a grandchild or a caregiver who is helping you into the car. There is also something to be said for one handle instead of two. If only one person ever rides up front, a single handle is all the household needs, and the second one in our pack does nothing at all on the days Gene stays home and I drive to choir practice alone.

The Part Neither One Solves

Here is what I wish somebody had told me before I went looking. A car handle helps you get out. It helps much less with getting in. Gene still lowers himself into the passenger seat with one hand on the door frame and one hand on the dash, and no handle in the latch changes that. There is a sequence to it and I have watched it a hundred times. He opens the door, turns his back to the seat, puts his right hand on the frame and his left on the dash, sets himself down in two stages, and then swings his legs in. It takes about fifteen seconds and there is nothing a handle can do about it, because once he is turned around the handle is behind him. What changed with the EMSON was the getting out, and it changed inside the first week. Getting in stayed the same slow business it had always been, and I have made my peace with that. My physical therapist Dana has been telling me for four years to push up on something fixed instead of pulling on a person. This is the first thing I have bought that lets me do it.

The other thing neither one does is replace a cane or a walker. Gene's cane goes with him everywhere. On a long day, the county fair or the farmers market, the rollator comes out of the garage and the car cane stays in the door pocket where it belongs. A car handle is good for about four feet of your day, from the seat to standing beside an open door. It is very good at those four feet. It is not good for anything else, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Three tries to stand up out of the passenger seat in the church lot. The handle in the door pocket fixed that part inside the first week, and did nothing at all for getting in.

Eighteen Months in the Door Pocket

The handle has been in that passenger door since the week we bought it. It comes out when the car is parked and it goes back in before we drive. You do not use one of these while the car is moving and you should not. Gene's has a scuff on the grip from the door pocket and mine still looks new, which tells you which of us is harder on things.

It does not fit every car. Ours is a sedan with a latch the handle slides into cleanly. My sister's older car has a narrower opening where it sits loose, and I found that out at her house in Vandalia in April, when I carried ours over to see whether it would help her and it sat in her latch like a loose tooth. She drove us to the cemetery and back that afternoon and neither of us trusted it. Check yours before you count on it, and check it with the door open in your own driveway, not in the store. Five minutes in your own driveway tells you more than a page of measurements. The grip is a knob shape you close your fist around rather than a bar you drape your hand over, and that suits Gene, whose hand does not close all the way anymore.

Gene did not want it in the car. He did not want the cane either, and he got over that one the night it slid off the table at our anniversary dinner. What I will say is that after the first week he stopped mentioning it, and now he reaches for it without looking, the way you reach for a door handle. That is the whole review, really. It became furniture.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the EMSON if there are two of you, or if you want a light and the emergency tools riding in the door with you, or if you want a handle with a published weight rating and a grip that works in either hand. Buy the EMSON if you are the one doing the pulling right now. The thing that stopped in our house was me hauling on Gene's arm in a parking lot, and my knee is grateful for it every Sunday. If you are the person on the other end of that arm, this is the purchase that gives you your own back.

Look at the Vive if you want one simple handle with no batteries and nothing to think about, or if only one person ever rides up front, or if a slim grip in the door pocket matters to you more than a light does. Neither choice is a mistake. The mistake is the one we made for months, which was doing nothing and pretending my arm was a handle.