This year promises to be a memorable one for Q’Straint, which is celebrating its silver anniversary in 2009.
Q’Straint got its start when specialists at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, developed a wheelchair securement system. Today, the company manufactures wheelchair- and occupant-restraint systems and “has been involved and present in worldwide standard committees such as SAE, ISO WC 19, CSA, AS Australia and others,” says Q’Straint’s Jean-Marc Girardin.

As for the future of WC 19 – the so-called crash-test standard for wheelchairs used as seating in motor vehicles – Girardin says, “WC 19 is a must, and this is the future. It is crucial to the safety of the wheelchair passenger.” He called on mobility dealers and clinicians to help spread the word to consumers. “This is the key to safe transport solutions,” Girardin says. “The only way we can move the wheelchair users toward a safer mobility aid or WC 19 wheelchair is through the efforts of all of us either directly or indirectly involved in transportation and transportation-related fields.”