Private: Portable Mobility Scooters

These days manual wheelchairs are being overtaken (literally) by mobility scooters. For many people, a mobility scooter is the difference between maintaining independence and being housebound.

Even those who would otherwise walk will hire mobility scooters when faced with a shopping trip in a busy location such as an out-of-town shopping centre or a visit to a theme park. A friend’s elderly mother, who is now very arthritic, has one in which she attends church, goes shopping and visits her neighbours, people she has known for decades.

She would be housebound otherwise, or utterly reliant on her children and grandchildren to take her out. At home, she is fine on her own, but walking any distance outdoors is now too difficult and unsafe for her. A foldable mobility scooter is the ideal solution.

Portable mobility scooters can be as light as 20-30kg in weight and are sometimes also foldable. There are many other heavier scooters which may also be portable in a wider sense if used in buses or specially adapted vehicles.

Anyone living in a tourist area, attending a theme park or museum will see these fold up mobility scooters in use. The people riding them are likely to be using them for a range of reasons, but there is no doubt that they are popular and fun for the younger family members to hitch a ride on too.

A fold up mobility scooter can allow the user to express their personality. While many are black, some come in colourful metallic shades. They can have stickers attached, be wound round with battery-driven Christmas lights and can be customised to carry many different types of baskets, bags and panniers.

A neighbour with declining mobility after a knee operation has decided he might as well have a blast if he’s going to be using this for the rest of his days, and has invested the several thousand pounds necessary in a scooter that looks like something out of Easy Rider. He’ll never be James Dean, but he can ride as if he was.

Certainly, foldable mobility scooters are not cheap, but when they allow a loved one to retain their independent lifestyle, surely it is money well spent?