Her fast-paced exploits through the Fair City streets made her famous across the world.
But Perth’s “Scooter Gran” could now change perceptions of how we move.
The Courier told last year how grandmother, Barbel Roerig, took to her fold-up children’s scooter to ease painful joints when she walked.
Her story attracted a worldwide Facebook following and sparked a probe by a team of experts at Glasgow Caledonian University. They have been amazed by the results.
Martin Steultjens, a professor of musculoskeletal health, said: “We noticed that she had stated that she had used the scooter because it reduced the pain in her knees and we were intrigued because that is mainly our area of research.
“And one of the ways that knees get painful is because they are overloaded because the load of the knee is too high.
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“We were interested to see if scootering could reduce the load on the knee and conducted a series of experiments to see if that was the case.”
One of the team studied Mrs Roerig’s movements and then copied them in laboratory conditions using a scooter borrowed from the child of a member of staff. Computer simulated results were then collated.
Prof Steultjens said; “What normally happens if you walk, as soon as your foot hits the floor, you get quite a big jolt through the knee and at the moment you are bearing about one and a half times your body weight.
“But what we saw with the scootering is that that big jolt almost completely disappears. We found that the load on the leg being used to propel the scooter the stepping leg so to speak was reduced by as much as 67%.
“We were not surprised that it reduced the load to some extent but we were really surprised just how much it did so.”
Mrs Roerig (74), a former architectural technician, moved to Perth in 1971 and has been a familiar figure in recent years because of her eccentric method of travel.
The Facebook page set up in her honour has attracted thousands of fans from as far afield as Columbia, Pakistan and New Zealand.
Charity T-shirts were sold in her honour and there were even rumours of an invitation to appear on Britain’s Got Talent.
She said: “I have sore knees and I have an allotment which means carrying a lot of stuff. I needed something to help with the load.”