Make Wheelchairs As Fast As Roller Beds

[Fortport]

Nobody wants to use a wheelchair to push an injured person over a roller bed, because roller beds are faster. Roller beds and wheelchairs fulfill the same purpose, but wheelchairs allow the patient to actually move on their own. You are less restrained, and it's more reasonable to be moved in this way if you're conscious and capable of moving a wheelchair but are otherwise injured(fractures for example).

From a gameplay perspective, a wheelchair or roller bed should move about as fast as the person pushing them can go. All the weight is on the wheels in both scenarios, and I don't really see a reason for one to be faster than the other. Is this an oversight or am I just overthinking things? I swear that roller beds are faster than pushing a wheelchair. Can this be improved, and should it?
 

Edited May 26, 2019 by Fortport

[Pratepresidenten]

I mean, why are you in a wheelchair? You're most likely crippled, right?

And to make more sense of why this is slower than usual, well.. I guess not everyone has superb upper body strength to work those wheels?

[GreenBoi]

Roller beds are meant to be easy to run across lengthy distances with and are for emergencies, so they're allowed to meant to be fast as they must be for emergency use. A wheelchair is for the average use of someone crippled in the legs, they don't want to be zooming around when they don't have to...it'd also take a lot more strenght & energy to move a wheelchair as fast as a roller bed than a roller bed as fast as....a roller bed.

[Fortport]

2 hours ago, GreenBoi said:

Roller beds are meant to be easy to run across lengthy distances with and are for emergencies, so they're allowed to meant to be fast as they must be for emergency use. A wheelchair is for the average use of someone crippled in the legs, they don't want to be zooming around when they don't have to...it'd also take a lot more strenght & energy to move a wheelchair as fast as a roller bed than a roller bed as fast as....a roller bed.

Wheelchairs are technically used in emergency facilities to move patients from one place to another. Wheelchairs are not just for an injury in the legs, but they are also for safe movement. Roller beds and wheelchairs fulfill that same purpose together, moving someone or enabling someone to move a distance while they may have fractures or shrapnel inside.

I think it would be easier to get someone onto a roller bed if they were legitimately unconscious, and that it would be easier/more comfortable to put them in a wheelchair if they were conscious and able to stand(but not safely walk). Roller beds are good for recovering critical patients out in the station, but wheelchairs are suited to transporting somewhat stable people around the medbay and shorter distances. In actual emergency rooms, people are sometimes quickly transported in wheelchairs because moving beds around(they're long) is a hassle in an active corridor.

The speeds of both of these are so close that I see no point in making the wheelchair slightly slower. If you want to say the wheelchair is heavier for some reason, it can't be by much? It's the future, too. Maybe they could be made out of lighter materials?

[Conspiir]

I'd say it's more of a safety thing. There's far less urgency in moving a person in a wheelchair because they aren't strapped in very tightly. If you go running with a wheelchair, when you stop, the person seated will have to compensate (if they can in their condition) to not end up dizzy or even hurt from the belt that holds them in the chair. Our roller beds are, thankfully, much easier to use than ones in real life as they can just be tugged along by one person and so should really be used for moving patients that can't functionally move on their own.

 

Moving yourself in a wheelchair should definitely be slower than being pushed, whatever your health state. Not the easiest thing in the world, for sure.

[Fortport]

26 minutes ago, Conspiir said:

Moving yourself in a wheelchair should definitely be slower than being pushed, whatever your health state. Not the easiest thing in the world, for sure.

1

Absolutely.

27 minutes ago, Conspiir said:

If you go running with a wheelchair, when you stop, the person seated will have to compensate (if they can in their condition) to not end up dizzy or even hurt from the belt that holds them in the chair. Our roller beds are, thankfully, much easier to use than ones in real life as they can just be tugged along by one person and so should really be used for moving patients that can't functionally move on their own.

 

Beds are unfortunately not that nimble to yank around in reality, and wheelchairs are actually used quite often to speed people along in emergency facilities. In real life, whether with a bed or wheelchair, you can build momentum with both. If you suddenly stop either of these things, the occupant will feel it. The force is spread out across the surface of the bed and also the buckles over the person that's strapped in(in real life they don't strap in everyone they move on beds), so it's a little better. I still think that wheelchairs are actually less cumbersome to move around and could technically go as fast or be easier to turn due to their length and volume.

[Screemers]

I agree with the idea in the condition that the same speed is only true if the wheelchair is being pushed by someone. Someone in wheelchair on his own should be slower in general even if just a little.

+1

[Goret]

For someone who have been in a wheelchair and even a roller bed, I can agree that being pushed by someone is almost the same speed for both. Not that I've been pushed at a high speed, though. But when you "roll yourself" you should keep a slow speed as its very tiring to do that, yep.