Reviewing my Nova knee walker

I am starting to feel better and cut my pain med consumption down considerably. Having my body function more normally and my head clear up has let me see some hints of the length of the recovery process. Time has been moving really slowly so far and I have exhausted everything I want to watch on hulu and almost everything on netflix. The process will be more clear next week when I find out how much work I can do on my injured leg.

Thinking about other people and their injuries has put my injury in perspective. One of my students broke his leg and had to have surgery this weekend - we'll be having dueling crutches or walkers next time we meet. A friend broke his leg skiing two years ago and has had complications that are still causing problems. If this goes smoothly, I'll be putting weight on it in two weeks after injury. And so far the pain hasn't been as bad as I expected.

Now I would like to review my knee walker. It is a rental unit and has obviously seen some miles but wear and tear only applies to a couple of the issues. It seems to be a Nova four wheel model. A few of its components are "stolen" from bicycles but obviously this wasn't built with the best of bicycle technology in mind. While I am being critical of it, it has made a big difference in my independence but it could be much better...

• First, the unit is very heavy. I mainly know this from watching Teresa carry it. I'm guessing the tubing is steel. This seems unnecessary as it only needs to support half a person. It is rated for 300lb people and maybe safety standards suggest some high level of overengineering. One would imagine an aluminum frame could be built for a similar cost that would cut the weight in half. There are other unnecessary additions such are both a seatpost collar and a bolt that goes through holes in the post. And the seat post looks like it is made out of a barbell type of material. The wheels are solid plastic which would likely be heavier than inflatable tires.
• Second, its handling and steering are weird. At any sort of speed it gets unstable. That would be forgivable if it had a tight turning radius that made it be too responsive, but its turning radius varies depending on which way you turn and is fairly minimal to the left. Neither direction seems to turn very quickly and I often end up lifting the front wheels off the ground to turn it - not exactly a safety feature.
• Third, the brakes are crap. The design is stupid, using brake pads on the rear wheels themselves. I think this is how they stop cable cars and the first bicycles. In my used unit, the brake actually only stops a single tire. Fortunately, the solid tires have no grip on carpet or wood floors, so this doesn't cause any instability. And if you don't have all your weight on the unit, the wheel locks up but it doesn't stop either. The brake lever looks like it came from a huffy from 1990 and has a hand lever that is large enough for big foot. As a safety feature, it does have a reflector on the handle, so if a car is approaching from the right, they might no run me over in my living room.
• Fourth, the solid tires are awful. As I noted, the handling and braking are poor probably due to the tires and the weight isn't helped either by them. I have to imagine there are inflatable tires out there that don't mar floors. The big thing this would provide is some ability to handle transitions between surfaces. I am not looking for a full suspension knee walker, but something that could role over a transition between rooms and grip a little along the way would be nice.
• Fifth, the grips are very thin. I don't plan on putting tons of miles on this, but the grips are extremely thin and provide no real cushioning and little grip. Again, bike grips have improved dramatically in relation to this in recent years and the worn out grips on this unit could be easily replaced.

Despite all my issues, the unit actually works just fine and the knee cushions so far seem to be the best part of the unit. It provides good stability as long as it is used cautiously. For the first time since my injury, I was writing on this blog to procrastinate doing some real work, which I am off to do now. Before, I was doing it because it was all I felt like I could do. With better weather coming soon, I'll be taking the knee walker out for a proper field test and might see some brilliance in the design, although I doubt it.