Wheelchair users can go off-road

10.34.05am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 17th Jul 2007

A Kent inventor has developed an all-terrain electric buggy aimed at giving disabled users the experience of going off-road through rough country. Chris Swift was a student agricultural engineer when he was disabled by a neurological condition as a teenager. He completed his degree, but realised his days of driving tractors were over.

He tried "all manner of devices" to get outdoors, but found nothing that was safe and easy off-road, and went on to devise the Boma buggy. Mr Swift, from Thanet, teamed up with his university friends to design his product and went on to find a company to test and sell it. He said the battery-powered Boma, which has been tested in the Alps and in Africa, uses mountain bike technology to give people "the ability to go anywhere. It rides the bumps very well and the terrain and just lets you have a bit of fun," he told BBC South East. "The Boma is a mountain bike for wheelchair users, in the simplest terms. "Don't think of it as a wheelchair - think of it as a four-wheel mountain bike."

Members of the Kent Outdoor Pursuits Disability Project put the buggy through its paces at Bedgebury Pinetum in Goudhurst.

Wheelchair user Lee Davies said: "What is does is open up the environment completely, and remove those natural barriers. Whereas with a wheelchair or a cycle, you're slightly restricted, this just means you can go anywhere that anyone else would go."