The Traveling Wheelchair

Body Point Designs
558 First Avenue South
Suite 300
Seattle, WA 98104
Phone:  800-547-5716
http://www.bodypoint.com/

Wheelchair manufacturers clearly state that their wheelchair seatbelts are used ONLY for posture positioning and support and are NOT designed or intended to protect wheelchair seated passengers in a vehicle during transport. Yet since there are no State or Federal laws requiring a wheelchair seated passenger to wear a lap and shoulder seat belt in a private passenger or transport vehicle OR for a public transport vehicle to even provide a lap or shoulder seat belt for a wheelchair passenger, you may sometimes find that the ONLY protection you really have if the vehicle stops short or is involved in an accident is the seatbelt that is fastened to your wheelchair.

All wheelchair seat belts should be firmly attached to the wheelchair frame. Most wheelchair manufacturers mount/fasten seatbelts to the wheelchair frame by simply placing a screw through a hole with grommet in fabric of the seatbelt. Most all the wheelchairs that I’ve had in the past twenty one years had my seatbelt mounted this way. The problem that I’ve discovered is that wheelchair seatbelts mounted with a screw through a grommet can wear down the webbing of the fabric as you can see in the picture here.

The seatbelt can rip right off your chair if the fabric gets too worn.  This happened to me in an auto accident. One side of my seatbelt ripped off the screw on my wheelchair and I went flying out of my chair. It has also happened to two of my friends, Kevin and Paul when the van they were in stopped short. Kevin wasn’t hurt but Paul had to get stitches in his forehead.

Kim, my friend Jamie’s mom told me that there are also metal triangular anchor end fittings and slides that can mount seatbelts to your wheelchair without the need to punch holes in the fabric of your seat belt. Kim and we now believe it is best to mount a seatbelt to a wheelchair with these kind of mounts because it is much less likely that your seatbelt will ever rip off your chair.

Body Point Designs makes two kinds of these metal triangular mounts. The mount I now have is called a Flat Mount and it mounts my seatbelt with a metal screw through a metal clip to the metal frame of my chair which you can see in this picture. I don’t think there is any way my seatbelt could rip off my chair with this mount. You can view this mount at http://www.bodypoint.com/store/product433.html

My friend Jamie has the Cinch Mount. It kind of looks like a seatbelt mount as you can see in this picture of his seatbelt mounted to the metal frame of his wheelchair  with the Cinch Mount. It safely keeps his seatbelt attached to his chair.  You can view this mount at http://www.bodypoint.com/store/product432.html.

I really trust that my seatbelt that is mounted with a Flat Mount will not rip off my chair. It really got tested in June when my tilt and space manual wheelchair tilted forward when wheeling up the ramp to my home and my seatbelt stayed on my wheelchair and prevented me from falling out of my chair!

These mounts can be found on Quickie website for a cost of  $65.00 at http://www.quickie-wheelchairs.com/  and the South West Medical website for a cost of $65  at http://www.southwestmedical.com.

Kenny & co highly recommend that all wheelchair users ask their wheelchair Sales Representatives to have their seatbelts mounted to their wheelchair with the Flat or Cinch Mount. At least until there is new Legislation regarding the use of lap and shoulder seatbelts for wheelchair seated passengers.

Kenny & co give Body Point Designs FIVE STARS for manufacturing the Flat and Cinch Mounts.