Invacare, a leading manufacturer of homecare products, has released its long-awaited line of pedal-powered wheelchairs, the Pedal Glides.
“A person’s arms are usually nowhere near as powerful as their legs,” said Invacare CEO Gerald Blouch, at the Pedal Glide release party. “Now when wheelchair people are tired from using their arms, they can just use their legs to keep on moving.”
“Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? This is such an obvious idea,” he added.
“I do get tired of having to roll my grandma around,” said Jack Elderkind, a loyal Invacare customer. “And the Pedal Glide provides exercise just from moving around the house, so I no longer need to take my grandma out to the park, or even out of the house.”
In the short amount of time since their launch, the Pedal Glides have already received praise from leading publications.
“I’m so tired of seeing disabled people’s legs just hanging there uselessly,” said Dan Warner of the New York Times. “So-called ‘handicapable’ people already leech off of the American people with their government-bankrupting disability handouts. The least they can do is move by themselves instead of making others push them around or using up our earth’s resources with electric-powered chairs.”
The Pedal Glides, however, are not without their critics.
“The Pedal Glide is outrageous and completely misses the point of a wheelchair,” said Steven Mahmasboi, a chief analyst at Consumer Reports. “By combining the versatility and freedom of a bike with the comfort of a wheelchair, they will be encouraging disabled people to roam the lands. We will now have to endure looking at these masses of disabled people on our streets and in our shopping areas, freely intermixing with humans.
“I might actually have to be around people who are different than me,” he added.
