Blasted inconsiderate Segway users! Damned if they don’t hit at least three people per city-block. Why don’t you need a license for those things? And then they’re so damned self-righteous about using them and preach to the rest of us careful walkers how the stupid thing is actually “Safer than walking.” Yeah, give it a few months, then the Segway injury-causing numbers will be about half those of walkers from the last thousand years! :mad:
I just know that “Segway rage” is going to be blamed for a dozen drive-by shootings before the year is out.
(Just wanted to be the first to get this particular rant in. Imagine! An original rant, all my own!)
I drove by a Vespa dealer yesterday. I don’t know how much a Vespa costs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re less than $3,000. Plus they go faster than the SHT. And they have a longer range. Which can be extended without recharging a battery. And they’re really cool-looking.
Personally I think a Vespa (or Lambretta or one of the Japanese scooters) would be a better deal than the SHT.
I don’t see those damn things catching on here in the Florida Panhandle. You can’t fit a gun rack or carry a lot of fishing gear in them, so basically they’re useless for about 90% of the general popualation here. Their 4WD or all-terrain capability is zero, yet another negative selling point over here for these motorized Dorkmobiles.
We’ll see about moving their hit-point value above 'possums but below the ever-challenging racoon or wild cat if these stupid machines ever venture out on the highways here.
I don’t see what’s wrong with it. It’s just another form of transportation. And it’s an early form of this type. In the future, they might have a design that integrates along your legs, much like a leg brace…but with wheels and an internal equilibrium.
Embrace technology. We’ll all be dead soon, anyway.
RE: the OP…
Interesting pre-rant. I like it. Or, did you just get off your time traveling Segway from a distant future where everyone rides them? It must be a bitch just trying to walk to the gorcery store in your time.
It rather amazes me that everyone rants about how lame the actual scooter is, but nobody acknowledges that the technology it’s based on is enormously cool, and probably a giant step forward.
Can you not think of any other applications that might benefit from the technology to self-correct balance and automatically respond to the smallest movement of its controller? Balance has historically been one of the biggest bugaboos in robotics research, and the ability to interface the digital world to the analog world is extraordinarily important.
not to mention, bluepony, it’s already designed for all-terrain capability. it supposed to be good for snow, sand, stairs, curbs, gravel, slightly rocky or loose terrain; get a big spare battery pack, and you are good to go.
C’mon Ogre, this is the Pit. There are serious discussions in GQ and GD. Here we’re simply trying to get the (humorous) rants in early.
(If I were to make a serious rant, I would note that they are talking about putting a silent machine going 12 mph on the same sidewalks with little old ladies and leashed poodles. I suspect that society has some issues to deal with before this thing takes off.)
Yep, more technology to advance robots in our future. I’m all for it.
Too bad I’ll be dead and gone before it’s commonplace. But then, I’ll be a grumpy old man…pissed I wasn’t born later in the century to enjoy the spoils of Northern American society.
With my luck I’ll be reincarnated into a third world country that gets blanket bombed by the USA. The military would come in on armed-segs with heat seeking ammunition.
My life sucks.
Hey, so all that StarWars tech is really Segway?? I was wondering how SkyWalker’s hover craft stayed upright all the time. Hmmm…but StarWars was a “Long,long time ago…”.
Yep, just as they say…“everything old is new again.”
About 12.5mph - Just fast enough to allow hordes of rampaging SegMads to wheel their chariots of death through the mall, sabering or running down shoppers at will.
The SegCops will be in hot pursuit, but weighed-down by heavy loads of official paraphenalia and donuts, their poor Segs will be over-loaded and unable to keep-up.
What really annoys me are the after market mods for the damn things. I mean, how badly do you need 100,000 candlepower spotlights and a wing spoiler for it? Don’t get me started on the 120 db subwoofers all the kids are putting in them! And what’s up with the hydraulic kits and the 17" chrome rims? Who cares if you can “make the ass drop?” Don’t they know that interferes with the Segway’s auto-balance technology (and voids the warranty?)
On the other hand, I went to this MonsterSeg rally the other night (we’ll turn the entire coliseum floor into a GIANT MUD PIT-IT-IT) and I saw one guy jump seventeen old-fashioned minivans with a modified, firebreathing Seg.