Use of new types of assistive mobility device in public transportation: assessment of the potential risks
Résumé
New types of assistive mobility devices (AMD) appeared these last years. They may be relatively different from the classical wheelchairs (geometry, mass distribution, manoeuvrability).Thus, it is not clear yet if the requirements on the public transport (PT) vehicles' design initially established for wheelchairs are still suited for these new devices, i.e. if AMD users could access the vehicle and travel without risks of degradations for the PT vehicle and without compromising their safety and the one of other users. To answer this question we proposed an analytical framework to analyse the potential risks of using PT vehicles with AMDs, including a simple model to predict potential tipping. We demonstrated this methodology for two types of PT vehicles (urban buses and tramway) and different AMD's. From this very first analysis it results that access to the designated wheelchair user area (constraints on the AMD manoeuvrability) and strategy to prevent tipping over of AMDs in the wheelchair user area should be carefully considered
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