As with Nature - Humans Find A Way - and then screw it up with rules

Disabled Aussie man has wheelchair banned from roads because... it's a tank?!

by Zach Bowman (RSS feed) on Jan 24th, 2011 at 3:01PM

An Australian man has been told by local authorities that he cannot use his custom TC Mobility wheelchair on public streets because its size technically lands it in the same category as a tank. The chair uses two rubber treads and a 24-volt electric motor, and it used to allow Jim Starr to go down to the beach with his family. That was before the Driver and Vehicle Licensing agency decided that the chair was too large to be classified as a typical wheelchair. Weighing in at 485 pounds, Starr's tracked-machine weighs 110 pounds more than the legal limit for motorized wheelchairs. It's also too wide.

As a result, Starr has been banned from riding his all-terrain chair anywhere other than private land. The hang-up is that in order to get to areas where he can legally use the device, he has to cross public roads.

Starr used to work as a landscape gardener before chronic arthritis, back and joint conditions bound him to a wheelchair in 1999. Head over to YouTube to watch the video of Starr in his Tank Chair (embedding disabled).

[Sources: The Mercury, YouTube]