Wheelchair man gets highway ride

6.59.38pm UTC (GMT +0000) Sun 10th Jun 2007

A wheelchair user has been taken for a high-speed ride along a US highway after his handlebars became tangled up in the front grille of a lorry. The back of Ben Carpenter's wheelchair was scooped up as he passed in front of a lorry leaving a petrol station.

The driver was completely unaware that he had a new passenger, kept in his wheelchair by a seatbelt. Passing motorists told police, who found the man unhurt - but still attached to the front of the truck.

Police in the town of Paw Paw, Michigan, said Mr Carpenter had told them "it was quite a ride", but complained only that he had spilled his soda. The lorry reached speeds of 50mph (80km/h) as it drove down the Red Arrow Highway.

After several miles the driver pulled over at the depot of a trucking company where police then told him about the man on his front end. He refused to believe there was a man in a wheelchair stuck to the front of his truck until he saw it for himself, police said.

"It's fast, I know that," Ben Carpenter told local Wood TV. "I was probably thinking that he [the driver] is going to keep going, not stop anywhere, go 50-60 miles somewhere". I mean I would have been dead way before that," he added."

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