Photograph of White Rally Car
"Hello" as you learned from the Allied Law home page, I am visually impaired, but what you may not know is that I enjoy challenging my disability to the extreme! Indeed, the photograph pictured above shows me with my Triumph TR7 V8 rally car. Although there's a championship for blind navigators in other countries e.g. South Africa, I'm the first in the United Kingdom to hold a Motor Sports Association competition license. I navigate by feeling a tactile map and calling the directions to the driver through the intercom, and like all good navigators I never look up from the map… even at 120 m.p.h.!
1. My latest race car is a real monster, an orange Triumph TR7 V8 with half the power of a Formula 1 single seat racing car which, during a rally consumes petrol at the astonishing rate of one gallon every four miles!
Photograph of Orange Race Car
The story of the car on the Promenade Stages Rally 2002, can be read by clicking on the link below-
If you want to learn a little more about rallying and how disabled people may get involved in motorsport, then just follow the two links below-
2. Another sport which I enjoy is water skiing. Indeed, most weekends you can find me swerving around a few slalom buoys at the Wire Mill in Surrey. Although I am blind, I still get the sense of the picturesque scenery around the mill lake and of course I still feel the thrill of the freezing spray hitting my face at over 30 m.p.h.! I have radio communication with the boat, whose observer gives me instructions through my earphones as to which direction the next buoy is to be found.
Photograph of Water Skiing
If you want to learn more about the Wire Mill and water skiing for the disabled, then please follow the two links below-
3. A more sedate hobby is that of model aircraft flying, which I've been doing since I was about 10 years old. Now-a-days it's much more difficult for me because I can't see the aeroplane at all. However, I still fly as co-pilot using two radio transmitters which are coupled together. In the hobby this is known as a "buddy box" system and this, together with an on board computerized auto-pilot allows me to still go flying.
Below is a photograph taken by my late father in about 1978 of the "boys" down at the local flying site near Blackburn in Lancashire. I'm the blonde haired lad to the right of the picture with the leather jacket on. Just note that beautiful rainbow in the back ground.
Photograph of Model Flying
If you would like to find out about model aircraft, then please take a look by following the next links-
4. What do they say about "boys and their toys? I think it's "the older they are, the larger their toys"! In the case of my Scalextric slot racing set that's not quite true, although I do have a four lane circuit running around my spare bedroom. My car, a black Ferrari F40 is fitted with an audible buzzer which means that I can "mix it with the best" when it comes to close racing. To add a little more realism, the circuit is computer timed and not only gives your lap time to a one hundredth of a second, but gives your average lap speed… in the case of my F40 about 135 M.P.H!
Photograph of Scalextric Ferrari Headlamps Blazing
5. I have always loved sports cars, and I was fortunate to receive for my twenty first birthday present from my parents a gleaming black 1972 Lotus Europa Twincam. The car was the motoring "love of my life" and only 41 inches high, which meant that girlfriends in short mini skirts revealed all on exiting the vehicle!
However, all motoring experts know that "LOTUS" stands for "Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious" and the car had to be sold only one year after purchase. That may have been the end of the story, but it was only the beginning and that's viewed by following the next link-
You may have guessed by now that I’m some sort of "car nut" having owned over 80 cars, including 13 Porsches, 7 lotus’s, 4 Alfa Romeo’s, various rally cars and 2 gleaming red Ferrari Mondials. Indeed, I have even driven the Ferrari myself at up to 130 M.P.H. on a local airfield! The annual event has been set up to give blind and partially sighted people the chance to drive a variety of vehicles ranging from double decker buses to dual control motor cars. To read more about the event, please follow the links below-
Link to story about Blind Driving
Photograph of my Ferrari 308 GTS
6.My father Stefan Komosa flew aircraft [including Vampire jet fighters] for over fifty years. In an attempt to follow in his footsteps, I have bought "G-ATOO", a four seat Piper Cherokee 140, I fly her with the aid of specialised electronics and a safety pilot alongside me.
Photograph of my Piper Cherokee
7. I've been using talking computers since losing my eyesight in 1986, and have therefore had a wealth of experience, not only in word processing, but e-mail technology, web design and I've even experimented with speech recognition. The latter system gives everyone a laugh when the microphone is placed near the speaker… after a while the software can be heard talking to itself!
Should you want to enquire about computing for the visually impaired, including web technology and accessibility, then please send an e-mail to-
Alternatively, you could check out the R.N.I.B's. advice on web design by following this link-
To take a look at the range of subjects I've dealt with over the years, then please click on the link below-
Therefore, if you require advice and assistance on anything which appears on these web pages, then please send an e-mail to-
Alternatively you may telephone-
07759-751320
[Copyright] Allied Law 2002