It'll Be The Rascal For Me

Every day I need to take a few minutes to straighten out the kinks before I get out of bed. I need to stretch a bit so I can get my knees and body contorted to a position from which I can put my socks on, and it always takes me a few minutes to loosen up the movement joints and muscles if I've been sitting for a bit. All of this comes with the territory, I guess, of a person closer to 80 than to 30. But the latest news about older folks has me a bit nervous.
A study to be published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society focuses on falls suffered by people over the age of 65. The study took place between January of 2001 and December of 2006 and examined results from emergency rooms in 66 hospitals. The researchers dealt solely with those individuals who had suffered injury as a result of an unintentional fall...while using either a walker or a cane! This places such accidents in a different category than the fall suffered by my mother years ago when she mistakenly got taken out on our driveway during a basketball game (was it a block or was it a charge? They're STILL looking at the replay). I mean, she didn't call time out or anything...just decided to amble across the driveway to the snack bar. The resulting collision was not a good thing. She, however, was not burdened with a walker or a cane when going down as were the people in the study though she certainly was after the fall. But back to current info.
Here's the statistical skinny:
It was estimated as a result that there are 47,312 accidental falls a year among people over 65. Of the fallen victims studied, 87% of them fell while using a walker, and 12% of them fell while using a cane. Sixty percent of these accidents occurred at home while 16% of them occurred in nursing homes. One can only guess where the remaining 24% happened: The Who concerts, the buffet line at The Golden Corral or Country Kitchen, pickle ball matches, or getting trampled by runaway grocery carts pushed maniacally by tots at the big box stores. But, I do see a light at the end of the walkway for me: The Rascal.
I'm sure there are many varieties of "power chairs" and "mobility products" which enable otherwise walking-challenged folks to enjoy a sense of normalcy with regard to transportation, but the Rascal is for me. I've toyed with the idea of a Segway, but in that case, I'm still standing up with a long way to fall...helmet notwithstanding. So, it's the Rascal. Priced from $995 to $6995, this conveyance will allow me total freedom of movement as long as there is a handicap-accesible ramp. No word whether or not they're street legal, but for seven thousand bucks, it had better be mnore complete than to have racing stripes.
Come to think of it, I could get a new Tata (I laugh every time I read that as a name for a car)from India for half that much, and I could take a couple of geriatric pals along with me. We just wouldn't be able to get out of the car.
Luckily, there are still places with car hops.