Be Careful With Those Scooter Chairs

I see quite a few people riding scooter-chairs along the sides of the road and on sidewalks.* On my way into work today, I saw one where the rider had dumped it in the middle of the road.**

This is the thing: Those scooters are tricycles and they have small wheelbases, especially laterally. Some of the folks riding them are well into the morbidly-obese range. Which means that as a rider/vehicle unit, the center-of-gravity is not going to be low.

A narrow wheelbase and high center-of-gravity, coupled with either a sharp turn on a decent bump in the road is a recipe for disaster. Especially since the person being dumped onto the asphalt probably has some semi-serious medical issues to begin with.*** Some of those chairs can clip along at a pretty good pace; being dumped from one isn't going to be as pleasant as falling out of a chair in a house.

Be careful out there, OK?
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* Probably because within a mile of me, there is a hospital, a senior-only complex and a few nursing homes.
** Three vehicles had stopped, one guy was talking to the vic and a woman was talking on a cell phone. There seemed to be enough people there and, not being EMS trained, I moved on. A mile down the road, two police cars and a fire dept medical response truck were screaming down the road towards the site.
*** Or they wouldn't be riding a scooter-chair.