The Dangers of Stupidity

Kenny at The Traveling Wheelchair sent me a story that reminded me of two things.

1. People with disabilities are too often at the mercy of patronizing entities that fail in their responsibility to provide proper service.
2. That there is a difference in being stupid, and responsible for yourself, and in being subject to another person's stupidity.

The wheelchair restraint story reminded me of an ugly incident here in Missouri that occurred several years ago. Attendants assisting a paralyzed person in taking shower helped him into the shower, turned on the water, and left for reasons I cannot remember. What I can remember is that is that the attendants had misjudged the water temperature settings, and the man was scalded. He eventually died of the injury.

The wheelchair restraint story also reminded me that I rode around for years in my personal van without proper restraints. In fact, I may still be doing so. My first restraints were none. I simply braced myself behind the front seats. My second set consisted on a pair of recessed tracks cut into the van's floor, a series of bungee cords, and one of the van's seat belts across my lap. My present restraint "system" consists of two sets of the van's seat belts, one for the wheelchair itself, and the other for me (to keep me in the wheelchair). The clip ends are bolted onto the frame of my power chair; the open ends are the original bolt devices attached to the van frame. To visualize this imagine two of the van's center seats removed, and all those wonderful seat belt systems waiting to be re-employed.

Most modern, commercially made restraint systems consist of wheel lock-downs augmented by a bar system across the lap of the wheelchair. At least, that's the system I remember in the commercial van used to transport people around Graceland.

I can remember when seatbelts became common on vehicles, and one of the analogies for their use was the comparison of a pea in a can. This, of course, was predicated on the idea of "the can" not coming open and flinging the pea out.

If a person rides about in a 250-pound wheelchair, I suppose the analogy is more like a lead bullet in a can.

I may add another seatbelt to protect myself from my own stupidity. I wish I could do something to protect myself from other people's stupidities.