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It's surprising that no one has thought of it first.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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I could see this being useful. Not everyone who uses a wheel chair is paralyzed. Some have balance issues, or limited strength. Dividing the effort between arms and legs could give increased independence and it would be more ergonomic than scooting with the feet like a lot of people end up doing in wheel chairs.
Sure, it's not super different from a recumbent bike (and seems to lack a steering mechanism) but if the pedals could be folded out of the way it could be easier for a person with mobility issues to get in and out of.
It's not necessarily about usefulness but rather quantity and economics of scale.
The number of people needing wheelchairs in the first place is pretty small compared to the population, and adding the additional caveat of those that can still use their legs fully to power what is effectively a bicycle, results in a venn diagram with an extremely tiny use case.
The cost of a decent basic wheelchair (not AliExpress/Walmart shit) is already high. Adding the complexity of a bicycle on top of that just makes it more expensive. And then there's insurance which almost certainly would tell you to kick rocks before they would even think of covering a fraction of the cost because it isn't necessary.
This is literally why those silly "as seen on TV" product commercials makes sense. You know, the ones where ordinary looking people seem super, incompetently incapable of doing normal everyday tasks. The snuggie sure seems stupid... Until you realize it it's meant for people who are disabled with mobility issues. Then it makes complete fucking sense. Most of those things were designed for disabled people, but that's a really small market to appeal to, so they broadened their market in order to make the things affordable to the actual target demographic.
I met a guy while I was working at Amazon whos dad bought a couple snuggies for hunting and overnight drives, and apparently his elderly disabled grandma who just didnt watch tv claimed half of then. This was apparently in the mid to late 2000s. Also according to him his grandmother wasnt a ludite his grandpa ran a movie and videogames rental place, and had built a whole as mini threatre in their living room.
Also according to him his grandma liked halo 2 and kicking his ass in smash melee.
Maybe this is a picture of some real hospital equipment? I didn't check for pixels.
It looks real, the top left poster reads "bone decalcification". However it seems that it's only for braking.
I think wheelchairs with a gear system and electric propulsion
You just increased the price by at least 100x for only double the production cost.