Older Posts
For race car drifters, drifting is a way of life, so when Rob Parsons was injured in 2011, a gear-head through and through who fell in love with drifting with his dad, he couldn’t give up his number one life passion. Instead of saying goodbye to what he loved, he said hello to a whole new way of doing it.
But it wasn’t a gift from some sympathetic donor or sponsor that helped him return to doing what he loves. After looking at how expensive adapted cars would be, he decided to start building an adapted drifting car in his own garage, and it is nearly to completion. Read on for his story below.
Why He’s Fearless
Rob Parsons, from Alberta, Canada, fell in love with drifting as a young man when Canada allowed a specialized car from Japan to be imported, which opened up the world of drifting to car enthusiasts in North America. Drifting, along with anything else on wheels, including dirt bike racing, became his life passion.
But in June 2011 while racing in a dirt bike race, his love for speed bit back. After going off a jump, he lost control of his bike and jumped off. While in the air he saw a fence coming his way, so he tensed his body for impact, and then he did the move that he regrets – he landed stiff-legged on the ground.
He landed so hard that he broke both legs instantly and severed his spinal cord at T9. One of his ribs also broke and pierced his lungs in the fall. Needless to say he was lucky to survive. Rob spent six months in the hospital, and was discharged to a life his therapists might have thought would be good for him – adapted sports and forgetting his old life – but it wasn’t.
This was impossible for Rob. He decided to get back into drifting, even though it’s ridiculously expensive to adapt drifting cars, and he bypassed a large portion of the costs by building the car himself along with the help of some of his friends when needed.
The first car he adapted was a Nissan 180SX, which he completely built into an adaptive Formula Drift car. He even built his own hand controls from scratch using electronic gear shifter made by Mastercraft and an electro hydraulic pump to move the salve cylinder.
What’s Next?
The car however wasn’t meant for just Rob. He wants to share his car with others with mobility disabilities, letting them know what it feels like to get behind the wheel of a powerful drifting machine. That is why in 2015 he founded The Chairslayers Foundation dedicated to just that.
The foundation specifically wants to get a 600HP drift machine, a more powerful vehicle for drifting, adapted. What Rob and his foundation is doing is so cool that the Discovery Channel asked for their help to help fulfill the dreams of a boy with leukemia who always wanted to drift.
Paralysis can happen to anybody and Rob’s story is a perfect example of that. We absolutely love how Rob’s giving back to the community too, and with one of the coolest new organizations we’ve seen in a long time.
— Follow him on Instagram: Chairslayer
ideas@spinalpedia.com
