Hello guys and girls,
Sorry to get involved in your discussion, but I work on the Mountain Trike, and we love to hear about problems people are having or concerns they might have with the trike. We are always trying to improve on our design, and since everyone has slightly different issues it’s an exciting challenge!
StillFingers: Our current prototype design only requires working fingers for the brake controls. The use of a gripping glove / strap with the handle gives you full control of propulsion and steering using your wrist movement. We are currently changing the brake design so that a single finger lever will operate both brakes (as opposed to having 2 levers, one for each brake) now this won’t help me either, I hear you say, but what it will allow us to do, is to change the “non steering” handle into the brake controls, so you can operate both brakes simultaneously with your wrist, in a similar way to how you would operate the steering. Does that make sense?
So hopefully you should have no problems with this in the future!
Silone74 (1): You are completely right, people with no trunk muscles at all will find it harder, and currently the levers will swing back a long way so you can start your pushing from a closer to the seat position if you like. You don’t need to lean all the way forward. We’ve had lots of people in your situation try it and though initially sceptical it isn’t too bad. I think the problem you’ve noticed is partially due to having a person with no spinal injury using the chair. In such a case they will instinctively use as many muscles as they can. I’ll try and get some videos of people with no trunk control for you.
Trininty: (First thanks for posting this on the forum) The being dumped out the front is a common concern and one I share with you. I have tried to push this trike as far as I can, taking it over rocky woodland paths that a mountain biker would find difficult! And despite going down big slopes, braking suddenly and going onto the anti tip wheels, I have never fallen forward out of it. The reason being that because the drive levers are in front of you, as long as you hold on to them, you can keep yourself in the seat. It feels strange to begin with, and I’m aware falling forward is a major worry for wheelchair users, it’s one of those things you’ll have to try. We are also fitting a seat belt as well though so this would help, and you can adjust the height of the anti tip wheels so that it tilts as little or as much as you like.
Silone74 (2): Good idea. I’ll have a look at how we can make the handle position adjustable, so you can move it back if you want. We need to do something like this anyway because we need to cater for different sized users. People with long arms would prefer if further away.
Allis53ca: You’re right, that cross bar has got to change! It has never caused us to crash or fall out, due to the centre of gravity of the chair when you are sat in it, even if you hit something at speed, but I don’t deny it could happen. We have a problem, on one hand we need to protect your feet, but on the other, a fixed bar like we have makes it hard for people to transition in and out. Any suggestions warmly received.
I hope you didn’t mind me commenting. I’d love to hear from you. We have a facebook page which has more details on our current prototyping, if you’d like to see that:
http://www.facebook.com/mountaintrike
If you live in the UK and would like to have a go on the trike, we are always keen to find people who want to have a go. Please do get in touch.
Ed.
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