Austrian man with bionic arms dies after his car veers off the road

An AUSTRIAN man who was the first in Europe to wear an innovative hi-tech artificial arm has died after the car he was driving veered off the road and crashed into a tree.

Christian Kandlbauer lost both arms in an electrical accident in 2005 when he was shocked by 20,000 volts after climbing a power line, but was able to live a largely normal life thanks to a mind-controlled robotic prosthetic left arm and a normal prosthesis in place of his right arm.

The 22-year-old died on Thursday, said Andreas Waltensdorfer, a senior physician at a hospital in the southern city of Graz, where Mr Kandlbauer had been in intensive care since Tuesday, the day of the crash.

The cause of the crash remains unclear. Both Waltensdorfer and local police said it was impossible to tell whether the accident was caused by problems with Kandlbauer's prosthetic arms.

He was found by a lorry driver who came across his burning car on a road near Bad Waltersdorf in south-east Austria after it crashed into a tree.

The driver managed to put out the flames, but it needed firefighters to extract Mr Kandlbauer from the mangled wreckage.

Kandlbauer, who drove himself to work every morning after getting his driver's licence a year ago, had said his quality of life improved dramatically due to the mind-controlled prothesis, which recognised signals from his brain and moved accordingly.

"Thanks to the mind-controlled prothesis, I'm almost as independent and self-reliant as I was before my accident," Kandlbauer said in comments on the website of Otto Bock HealthCare Products, the company that produced the artificial arm. "I can pretty much live the life before the accident."

In order for the prothesis to work, four of Mr Kandlbauer's nerves were redirected to his left chest muscles.

Mr Kandlbauer's Subaru Impreza car was adapted with special equipment, including a modified emergency brake and a button to operate functions such as the horn, indicator lights and windscreen. It was approved by Austrian transportation authorities.

On his website, Mr Kandlbauer described how he took both artificial arms off every night and recharged them like mobile phones. He also wrote that getting a driver's licence had been one of his major goals.

Following the operation, Mr Kandlbauer returned to work as a stock clerk at the garage that once employed him as a mechanic.

Members of the public are now using his site to express their condolences.

The arm was developed using a pioneering technique known as targeted muscle reinnervation, in which nerves that once controlled a lost limb are used to control a prosthesis. Kandlbauer was the guinea pig for the four-year research project.

Earlier this year, Dr Hubert Egger, head of the research team that developed Kandlbauer's arm, praised him for his courage. "Christian is the first patient in Europe where this surgery was done, and the first person in Europe with this mind-controlled prosthetic," he said.

Staff at the company which built the arm were understood to be shocked by the death of a man they had come to see as a friend.