The motorcycle is bigger, requires a special license, and can’t go indoors.
A point about the Segway that a lot of folks overlook is that it’s not meant to be a motor vehicle, but a mobility device – like a wheelchair (Dean Kamden, the inventor, has also created a wheelchair that stands on two wheels and climbs stairs). The idea isn’t that you’d drive a Segway to somewhere and then walk around, but that you’d use it to go everywhere, like a pair of sneakers. Since most public places are now required to be wheelchair-accessible by the ADA, the Segway can follow those same routes.
Sam, I said most of those things myself when this thing came out.
Where do you park to make it safe? Do you chain it down like a bike? Do you trust your $6000 machine to just a cable, when it can be carried away without a tow truck or a trailer?
I too remember Kamen saying that getting hit by a Segway rider would be like being hit by another pedestrian.
I said, “Yeah, a pedestrian doing a full sprint carrying a couple hundred pounds in his backpack.”
I guess it might be nice around the factories or maaaybe carrying the mail, but it’s sure not going to sell very well to the average person. Come to think of it, though, why have them even around the factory? I guess maybe the CEO thinks it might be neato, but if you’re talking about the average factory worker, and nice smooth, almost polished concrete, just give them imitation Razor scooters. They go pretty quickly when you want, they fold up, they cost very little, and they weigh almost nothing. Poifect.
I don’t know if the Segway will be a commercial success, but I’d like to point out a few facts that are being ignored:
The $6,000 price tag is for early adopters. It will drop in price as time passes. Remember how DVD players used to cost $1,000?
Many cities have bike trails; this seems a more likely place for these machines to operate.
They’re fun. Don’t underestimate the importance of fun.
On the negative front, there’s a lot of focus here on the Segway-pedestrian collision. What about a Segway-Segway collision? Yikes.
I vaguely recall that when the Segway was unveiled on Good Morning America, they actually had someone riding one try to ram into one of the hosts.
End result – the Segway came to a dead halt, using its auto-balancing technology to avoid falling over. The host said it felt no worse than being nudged.
…and when an employee falls off of one, you better make sure your insurance is paid up.
rjung: I suspect that demo was rigged. A segway has no collision avoidance system. Or if it wasn’t rigged, perhaps the person riding it involuntary leaned back as if to avoid hitting someone, causing it to stop.
That doesn’t make it collision-proof. If a person is ogling the babe across the street while cruising along, he’s going to plow into things.
I’d like to see some crash tests of the Segway. Put a crash-test dummy on it, rigged to be leaning forward so that it’s going full speed. Run it into a brick wall, and let’s see how the dummy fares.
Sidewalks are very dangerous places. People dart out of doorways, cars come out of alleys, traffic goes all directions chaotically.
If the Segway is legal to ride on a sidewalk, why isn’t a bicycle? The bicycle doesn’t go any faster and weighs less. But go check out how many bicycle/pedestrian injuries there have been when cyclists ride on sidewalks.
The Segway doesn’t have a collision-avoidance system, but it does have one helluva gyroscopic balance-checking system that samples 30 times a second. A collision would register in the same way as a balance problem, methinks, and would have similar reactions to compensate.
If it’s responding to an impact, it’s too late. There’s no way an electric motor will be able to brake that thing faster than the thing it’s hitting can absorb the energy. It might minimize the damage slightly.
Think of it this way - if you ran into a brick wall in a Segway, at impact the motors would have to instantly provide the same amount of impulse that a concrete wall acting over the entire surface of the device can. I don’t see how that’s physically possible.
But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see - my prediction: The Segway will be just another industrial vehicle like dedicated postal trucks, those little electric carts that are used in large factories, etc. Plus, they’ll find a market for the elderly or other people who are mobile but can’t handle walking for long distances.
They’ll be common enough at some point that you won’t be startled when you see one in the right area, but they won’t ever make it as a commuter vehicle. You won’t see dozens of them tooling around sidewalks at any given time. Maybe the odd downtown courier will motor past you one one, or something like that. But that’s it.
Literally painful – not to mention embarrassing – college-days memory stirred by above statement.
I think the Segway was vastly overhyped, but it may yet catch on in certain specialized areas. Also, I wonder if it might meet more acceptance in Europe and Asia than in the States; I understand that most of the cities aren’t designed around automobiles and are more pedestrian-friendly than those in America. We’ve had comments from at least one UK resident and one Korea resident on this thread. Any others?
RR
What made me question these things was when Kamen appeared on The Tonight Show with some of them. Jay Leno and Russell Crowe were playing with them, and Kamen kept following Russell around with his hands out, as if to catch him when he fell off. Crowe actually had to yell at him to back off.
It made me wonder what’s up if the inventor doesn’t think an action movie star can handle it.
It weighs 65 pounds, which will make it nigh on useless to the elderly. Riding it would be easy; getting it back into the closet would be pretty hard for a frail old lady. Those walkers you see old people use weigh 4 pounds. A Segway weighs 15 times that.
I see industrial applications for them. The notion they’ll change society is just absurd.
did you guys see that beast?
it’s massive!
i agree with the collision argument… dang that would seriously injure people. rjung… what was your point about that gyroscopic balance-checking system?
doesn’t that just help with the balance of the rider?
i can’t see this machine being used much.
good for bike paths… that already limits its use. what can you do on bike paths? going to the mall? how many stores have you seen with wide aisles? you’ll probably be knocking down things.
it’s a cool idea. cool invention. but not really a practical thing.
i was laughing watching their videos of this thing.
i wonder how long it took to train those actors in using that beast. they all look so … dumb…
[hijack]
Maybe he was trying to find an excuse to feel up Russell. I know I would
[/hijack]
Yes, I agree the Segway isn’t perfect. The first automobile wasn’t either. But I see it as the base for a new kind of transportation to be developed, which is pretty neat.
I e-mailed Segway questions about my concerns of safety. There have been really no safety tests published about this device. I also mentioned how access to me seemed to be problematic. They never responded.
Well, here’s one UK resident who’s emphatically not looking forward to an influx of these things. Pavements (“sidewalks” in American) in Oxford are often narrow, uneven, and congested with foot traffic (and skateboarders, rollerbladers, and ****ing cyclists who should be in the road anyway, and, very often, illegally parked cars); I don’t see Segways helping here - just one more nuisance for us pedestrians to avoid.
Personally, if I (like rjung) have half a dozen errands to run at shops within three miles of my flat (and I often do), I walk. If somewhere’s beyond walking distance, I take the bus. I’ve sometimes thought about joining the Dark Side and buying a bike, but the advantages of that would be exercise, which the Segway doesn’t provide. Basically, there are no niches in my lifestyle into which the Segway fits. I suspect that’s true for a lot of people.
“Nice” doesn’t have to mean a $1000 titanium or carbon-fiber framed yuppie toy with GPS and keyless remote that gets used for three weekends and then put in the garage as Mr. Yuppie slides into a life as a future fatassed couch potato. So yes, you can get a nice bike for $100 - one that gets you around as well as a Segway.
There’s been a variety of electric bicycles introduced over the years, such as by Clive Sinclair, and none of them seem to have really caught on, despite being far cheaper than a Segway. A Segway has the advantage of looking cooler, and it’s smaller if apparently heavier than an electric bike.
I guess people like pedal bicycles because they don’t have to charge them or worry about the batteries going flat, they give you exercise, they’re simple, easy to use, reliable and easy to maintain. Segways are strange and new and far too expensive to be impulse purchases.
It would be great here in Prague. There are plenty of walking/bicycle paths, and the traffic here SUCKS. That said, the public transport here is the best I’ve ever encountered, so, it would be relegated to a nicety.
It would work getting around and doing some shopping, but only if you could leave it outside- and then you have the security issue. Having space-age thumbprint/retina scan technology would help, but if it can be shoved in the trunk (boot) of a car, then that also sucks.
As for niche apps- I can easily see it in factories and for postal workers, etc. The commercial sector might be the best place for it. Once they work out the wrinkles, private ownership would increase.
Ups and downs, but I hope it continues. I’d buy one if it were $1000…Have you checked out the site lately? The newer pics show 3 storage cases, and even a trailer. Neat!
