Page 23 - Mobility Management, September/October 2021

added, makes a difference: “It’s much shorter than a traditional rear-wheel-drive chair. Most rear-wheel-drive chairs have that really big distance from the rear wheel to the front caster, which gives them that big turning radius or that big swing. By shortening the wheelbase and then spreading out the load over the entire chassis, we have a very stable, very comfortable, maneuverable chair. When people get into that chair, folks I’ve known forever who have tried pretty much everything, they’re blown away by the comfort of it and where it will go. It has that nice outdoor perfor- mance, and it will go places that other chairs won’t go — but most importantly, it’s how well it maneuvers in elevators, indoors and how tight the turning radius can be if it’s set up correctly.”
How Technology Has Leveled the Playing Field
Tracking technology and suspension systems have improved the overall power chair experience, regardless of drive-wheel type.
Peterson referenced Ben Leclair, a member of Amylior’s marketing team and a professional wakeboarder who sustained a C3 spinal cord injury in 2016. Leclair now has a mid-wheel-drive Amylior M3 and a rear-wheel-drive R3.
“He prefers the R3,” Peterson said, “because he feels less fatigued throughout the course of the day. He feels more comfortable in the Hybrid Wheel Drive — that’s what we’re calling it now, an HWD,
not a rear-wheel drive. He doesn’t have as many issues with his
tone or spasticity as he does in a center-wheel drive. I think it’s the suspension; I think it’s also where he is on the base. He’s not sitting on top of the drive wheel; the drive wheel is kind of behind him. Benjamin also uses a drive wheel with a 14x4" tire, which is the larg- er-diameter tire for outdoor performance, and that gives him more shock absorption as well. He’s in aggressive urban environments and outdoors on trails, outdoors in the woods. He likes to be outdoors.”
Peterson added that while power chair literature often high- lights the big numbers — how high an obstacle a power chair can climb, for example — consumers often have different concerns.
“People say, ‘It’s not uncomfortable for me to go over a curb cut, it’s not annoying for me to go over a huge gap in pave-
ment. It’s uncomfortable and annoying for me to go over bricks, cobblestones, those constant vibrations day to day.’ That causes them to have more stress, more tone, more fatigue. So with the dual-action suspension on the R3 and the M3, we have two facets of the suspension. The first is what reacts to the ground, so that’s what keeps your front and rear casters and your drive wheels
on the ground and helps keep them level. But the second part is that rear spring that ties the base to the seat, so you watch that spring absorb shock and try to keep the seat as level as abso- lutely possible. When we keep the seat level, that means we’re
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