UCD among grant awardees to study
wheelchair transportation safety
The University of Colorado Denver has been named one of four university partners awarded a five-year, $4.5 million federal grant to continue research on transportation safety and usability for people who use wheelchairs.
The U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research has renewed funding of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wheelchair Transportation Safety (RERC WTS) to a partnership headed by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and including the Universities of Colorado, Pittsburgh and Louisville.
The partnership was originally formed in 2001 to advance the safety, usability and independence of the large proportion of 1.7 million individuals who remain in their wheelchairs when traveling in motor vehicles.
“ We are thrilled to have the opportunity to continue researching ways to make transportation safer and easier for people who use wheelchairs,” said Mary Ellen Buning, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at UCD’s School of Medicine. “Those of us who walk usually take transportation for granted, yet it is the vital link to all of the things in a community: work, fun, healthcare and church.
Those who ride seated in wheelchairs should have equally safe and easy transportation whether it is in a school bus or transit bus, a personal van or paratransit. It’s vitally important to remember that transportation connects people, regardless of their physical abilities, to life and the community.”
Lawrence W. Schneider, the center’s new director and head of UMTRI’s Biosciences Division, said: “Recently, the National Council on Disability reported that many people with disabilities who are willing and able to work cannot do so because of inadequate transportation. While this report and other similar studies apply to people with all types of disabilities, there is little question that wheelchair users face significant transportation problems.”
The partnership of universities will conduct research and development in six project areas, ranging from developing solutions for forward-facing and rear-facing wheelchair passenger stations in large accessible transit vehicles, to investigating issues of school bus transportation for children in wheelchairs, to improving frontal- and rear-crash protection for wheelchair occupants in private vehicles.
In addition, the RERC WTS will disseminate information, train future researchers, transfer technology concepts to manufacturers, and develop and revise voluntary industry standards. To learn more about RERC WTS, please visit www.rercwts.org.
