Power chairs: older and fatter Americans are on the move [View All]

[The Straight Story]

Power chairs: older and fatter Americans are on the move

ST. PETERSBURG — A man on a moped crashed into a man in an electric wheelchair the other night in the middle of Fourth Street. There on the front page of the paper was a police tape picture of one of those objects we see all over. The wheeled mobility industry calls it a power chair.

They're everywhere, it seems, dotting the downtown streetscape, a kind of ant trail from the condos to the Publix and back.

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A 60-year-old man in Minnesota took his scooter to the store to get some Jell-O and ended up under a Ford Expedition. A 70-year-old woman on a scooter got hit by a Chrysler in Nebraska. A 79-year-old man on a scooter drowned in a marina in South Dakota. All that's just this year.

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State law says motorized wheelchairs are allowed on a road where the speed limit is 25 or less, or on a bicycle path, or in a crosswalk even if that crosswalk is on a road that has a speed limit of more than 25.

State law also says sidewalks are for pedestrians. No motors.

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This is to say nothing of the fact that the manufacturers of EMDs say (even if they don't really mean) that their products aren't meant for outdoor use. Medicare, which last year paid out $547 million for power chairs, won't pay for an EMD unless it's specifically meant for indoor use.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/health/power-chairs-older-and-fatter-americans-are-on-the-move/1138096