From the BBC comes this article about a Formula One engineer who decided to re-design the wheelchair. He notes that the basic design of a wheelchair chassis dates back to vintage car days.

This product cuts across a couple of fields, arbitraging the best of racing car design (a carbon fibre monocoque) to bring about a radical redesign for the wheelchair.

What is more interesting is that the designer was not disabled himself, and was not a wheelchair user. He has founded a company called Trekinetic. Since the BBC story it looks like the site has got so much traffic that it is temporarily down. It’s not surprising, since a lot of wheelchair users are probably very frustrated.

Next in line for a re-design should be those terrible looking mobility scooters – with a rapidly aging population it surprises me that this has not been tackled already.