While I think the management in charge of the stadium sidewalks failing to cut the curbs goes beyond negligence, My thought process for much of the article was

While I think the management in charge of the stadium sidewalks failing to cut the curbs goes beyond negligence, My thought process for much of the article was "why didn't the husband just roll her over the curb". That is because I was envisioning a standard wheelchair with large wheels designed to be propelled by the user as well as a helper. YouTube is full of wheelchair curb hopping (and more) instructional videos. I had visions of picking my ~100LB wife up over a big stair/whatever. Anyway, I'm going to basically agree with you, and say that it appears that motorized wheelchair manufactures are partially to blame here. That wheelchair is more like a motorized bed than what I would consider a wheelchair. So whats the excuse (regulation cant be all of it)? Particularly now that battery technology has gotten to the point where the battery packs to move a person around for 10-15 minutes (see electric scooters) are just a few lbs, and materials technology allow us to build mechanically stable structures which are also super lightweight. Without going into questionable tech, i'm sure I could build a large wheel segway style device with a low center of gravity seat that could just drive over most curbs. Probably could even do it for less than $30k... We wouldn't even be talking about cracked/broken sidewalks at that point. In fact, I was having a similar conversation with a friend the other day about certain SF style devices probably being in reach for locomotion today.