Wheelchair Drifting – Turning Lemons Into Awesomeness

Made popular by The Fast and the Furious movies, drifting is the art of your car’s back wheels gliding after gaining momentum. This is done by turning to the side real fast, and it can be pretty awesome to see. Not surprisingly, wheelchair-users are getting in on the drifting action (it was only a matter of time).

Drifting however is all about surfaces. From blacktop and tile to natural surfaces like ice, how well you drift (and impress everyone around you) is dependent on it. The “vehicle” as well is just as important. Powerchairs are the  easiest to drift, however I have seen manual chairs drift on ice. Check out our three sweet wheelchair drifting videos below showing how it’s done on all surfaces.

Our first video comes from one of the most prolific quadriplegic video bloggers in the world, Chris Colwell, a U.S. resident currently living overseas in the Middle East. He loves high adrenaline fun (he was injured in the sky-diving accident) so it comes as no surprise he’s perfected how to drift in his Permobile powerchair, and on fancy Arabian tile no less.

It’s only 36 seconds long, but it’s worth a look. It shows him on some tile in a mall, drifting in circles over and over again, and the speed he get as he continues to drift is awesome. Not sure how he doesn’t get dizzy, but he seems to have a natural talent for these kinds of things. Watch Chris drift like a champ on fancy tile

If you have access to an ice rink, or maybe the road outside your house just got hit with some frozen rain (eek!), drifting on ice can be some of the most fun you’ll ever have in your chair. You can really get a big drift going in your wheelchair on ice; much better than on any other surface, and our second video from a spry wheelchair-user having fun at Penrith Ice Palace in Sydney, Australia proves just that.

In the video, you get to see his impressive wheelchair drifting skills during a free skate (with able-bodied skaters everywhere). His dodging skills are also crazy good, especially when he’s at top speed. While it’s probably best not to do this with so many people around, this video is a riot. Watch wheelchair drifting on ice

If you happen to not have any ice around, you can always wheelchair drift on a wet blacktop surface, like a freshly cleaned and still-wet sidewalk, as this video showing a Mike Oliveri, a very guy with Muscular Dystrophy, drifting in Hollywood late at night illustrates. In the video, he and his buddies decide to venture out to record wheelchair drifting high-jinks, and they catch some pretty epic stuff.

While a random drunk girl sees the drifting and decides to stop and watch and kinda gets in the way (she also has a potty mouth; parents be warned), the drifting he musters by the end of the video is pretty awesome. Whoever thought a wet sidewalk could be the basis for something so awesome? Watch some epic late night Hollywood wheelchair drifting

If you dream of learning how to wheelchair drift too, remember, be careful. Start out slow and make sure you’re not in a high traffic area. It can be awesome though, so don’t let a little required practice turn you away from your wheelchair drifting dreams. Who knows, maybe you’ll be cast in the next The Fast and the Furious movie.

Where have you drifted your chair?

Watch the videos!

– Chris Colwell wheelchair drifting on Arabian tile

– Wheelchair drifting on ice in Australia

– Wheelchair drifting on a wet sidewalk in Hollywood