Japanese solutions nobody wants
Last week Japan had their Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo. This Japanesque Rube Goldberg device was featured on the always informative Japanprobe.com.
HOWEVER, right now as a wheelchair user*, I find Toyota is being a bit disingenuous about this “robotic” roof rack for wheelchairs.
- The concept of roof rack for wheelchairs has been around since the 1960s—It’s a mostly forgotten, dead-end design that is hated by users for being cumbersome and prone to jamming (the handicapped user has no way to stand up and unjam the device)
- This roof rack requires an X-folding type of wheelchair, which are old-fashioned and heavy (3-8 kg heavier). Modern wheelchairs fold flat after popping the wheels off (quick release hubs) and would not work this roof rack system.
- Independent wheelchair users prefer to roll up as fast as possible to the driver’s door, fling themselves in the driver’s seat, pop the wheels off the chair, and throw wheels and collapsed chair into the front passenger’s seat and foot-well. My best time is 20 seconds. More severely disabled wheelchair users use a van with a wheelchair lift. Nobody wants that Toyota roof rack system (which looks like an OEM or a copy of the failed roof rack systems from the States and UK).
- The best car “wheelchair system” in Japan is no system at all–Just a standard Honda Odyssey with the mainstream options for a power sliding door, a few of the passenger seats removed and 180 degree swiveling driver’s seat.
- The Toyota Prius (aerodynamic drag of cd 0.26) with that huge roof rack added would create enough drag to eliminate the advantage of having a hybrid drive-train. Prius owners have had their mileage drop from 47 to 36 mpg (US) with one kayak on top and this roof rack is wider and less aerodynamically shaped than a kayak.
* I have been in a wheelchair since mid June
with a mega-farkqued broken leg, and I spent
couple years in a wheelchair in my college days
due to paralysis caused by a rappelling injury.
Also refer to the related 3Yen report on the handicapped—The mysterious “Blue Shamrock” car sticker that means the Japanese driver is handicapped by too much Irish whiskey. ;-)
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October 5th, 2009 at 4:37 am
I think it’s a bit bulky…
couldn’t they come with a less bulky idea? What they were thinking?
I’ts like from that box,a robotic body will come and turn out the whole car into a transformer…
amazing scientific breakthrough!!
October 5th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Japan needs to focus less on cool-looking (in a retro-50s sci-fi, ‘world of tomorrow!’ sense), useless, crap and get in the bedroom and make some babies so there’s somebody around to use this stuff in 50 years. (That or actually have meaningful immigration which, I’m pretty sure, is never going to happen.)
October 5th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
You might want to have a look at some Renault based custom solution: here a civil version of the Renault Traffic generation: http://www.jubileeauto.net/Renaultsolus.php
As long as you don’t want to win an F1 race… them be good cars…
October 5th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Hello,
I came across your site from a Google alert for “wheelchair”. Since my product’s blog is related to this, and because Google is fond of content related links, I was hoping you’d be interested in a blogroll.
Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Jeff
October 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Gee Mr “Wheelchair,” thank you so much about commenting about your wheelchair cupholder blog that, “is related to this.”
I really needed a cupholder for my sea cucumber.
Fair use – Parody