Slashdot Log In
Segway Getting Real-Life Tests
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Apr 25, 2002 07:07 PM
from the life-is-grand-when-you-own-lobbyists dept.
from the life-is-grand-when-you-own-lobbyists dept.
EReidJ writes: "washingtonpost.com (no registration required) has an article on real-life use of the new Segway scooters, including an update on some of the safety issues and where state laws currently are with use of the Segway. (20 states have specifically passed laws to allow the Segway on sidewalks.) Interesting read."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Yeah but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone try riding a bicycle on ice?
My first thought was the snow. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would counter your thought of a bike on ice...the way the segway works with gyros(I think, never looked at tech specs of it) it might behave better on ice than a bike...it also has a much lower center of gravity, which would also help on ice. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it would be really usable on ice, but I bet it would be better than a traditional bike.
Parent
Video of Segway on snow and ice (Score:4, Informative)
It looks pretty stable, amazingly enough. For the bucks, I'm sticking with my bike.
Parent
See the site (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My first thought was the snow. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My first thought was the snow. (Score:3, Funny)
Heh... =)
Re:Yeah but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone try riding a bicycle on ice?
You need to take a trip to the ICEBIKE website [enteract.com]....
I rode through the Michigan winter this year. It was a pretty mild winter, and they're pretty fast to clear the roads around here. But it is possible to ride under those kinds of conditions--go very slow, and be very sure you know how much turning/braking you can get away with before you skid!
Oh, and get some really, really good protection for your extremities--the rest of your body will stay warm from the exercise, but those fingers can get cold fast....
--Bruce Fields
Re:Yeah but.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah but.... (Score:3, Informative)
segway seems too big (Score:4, Interesting)
An amazing technological achievment no doubt, but I'm worried about the practicality.
Re:segway seems too big (Score:2)
I personally wish it could enclose your whole body. Then I'd feel like a tank, although I'd be missing the live ammunitions.
F-bacher
More info on Segway available by phone (Score:2, Informative)
It even has a feature where you can key in your ZIP code and it will give you the nearest dealer, and ETA for shipment (avg. 6 months or so). You can also call to be put on their mailing list.
Re:More info on Segway available by phone (Score:3, Funny)
By phone???? Seriously? Ever heard of the interweb for cryin' out loud?
Try: http://www.segway.com/ [segway.com]. This *is*
Broken article link (Score:3, Informative)
Safety & crowding (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't some sidewalks (NYC, SF) crowded and dangerous enough as it is, as far as bumping into people and such?
Imagine making those everyday collisions with fellow 'pedestrians' when one of you is moving at twelve and a half miles an hour. I foresee dislocations, damaged merchandise, and god forbid one of these cops happens to do one of those fruit stand smash-ups so popular in the film industry.
I'm all for a new, efficient means of transport, but these things need their own lanes of travel, like some cities have provided for bicyclists.
Segways are too dangerous to be on the sidewalk (Score:2, Informative)
Websurfing: The Next Generation - StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]
Re:Segways are too dangerous to be on the sidewalk (Score:5, Insightful)
Being electrical vs. pedaled means that somebody piloting one of these machines is less likely to value their constant speed. A bicyclist has to start pedalling again after slowing down to make up for lost momentum. I think this is the cause of some unnecessarily risks/maneuvers.
Again, I'm not saying that it's totally safe, I'm just saying it's different enough that it's possible that it'd be allowed. Personally, though, I think sidewalk travel with these devices should be capped to roughly the speed of soembody walking past. If they were to implant the proper indicator on the housing, one could be fined for going too fast on a sidewalk. (i.e. put a light that turns on when the device goes faster than x mph.)
Parent
Re:Segways are too dangerous to be on the sidewalk (Score:2, Interesting)
How far can you lean forward? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, what you do when you fall is just "miss" the ground. At that point you just sort of take off and start to fly...but don't think about it too much.
Oh, and remember to bring a towel
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How far can you lean forward? (Score:4, Informative)
This is wrong. It's the WHEELS that move the segway and keep it upright.
The gyroscopes are tiny little sensors that detect rotational accelleration. To understand this concept, imagine a toy gyroscope - the kind enclosed in with a wire frame. As you rotate the frame around the axle, the wheel inside continues to spin at the same speed. If you were to continually measure the speed of the wheel relative to the frame, you can determine which way the frame is turning and how fast.
It's not like the gyroscopic action of a motorcycle wheel keeping you upright. If that were the case, segway would have to be incredibly big, heavy, and power consuming.
The gyros in the segway are no doubt piezoelectric - I'm not sure exactly how those work, but it's the same basic idea. They're about 1 cubic inch in size.
Parent
...sidewalks (Score:3, Interesting)
In states that haven't explicitly allowed these bugges on the sidewalks, can you use them in bikelanes? What conditions does your vehicle need to meet to be a bike? How about a moped or something of that nature- open, wheeled, anything else?
Some good technical points (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some good technical points (Score:4, Funny)
I think the actual law (Newton's 4th) went something along the lines of "A body on segway stays on segway unless presented with sufficient coinage."
Parent
Re:Some good technical points (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Popular Science article (Score:5, Informative)
bike lanes, not sidwalks (Score:4, Insightful)
(and before anyone whines about their city not having enough bike lanes... here is yet another incentive to add some)
Political/Marketing clout? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it all just a load of local lobbyists pressing the city councils? It seems to me like there's enough hype/marketing here to choke a whole herd of horses.
Re:Political/Marketing clout? (Score:4, Interesting)
A cyclist in traffic behaves much more like a car, and is easy to predict. As a driver and a bicyclist, I have no problem with a bicycle slowing traffic down. It's much safer and less stressful for everyone.
-Paul Komarek
Parent
Re:Political/Marketing clout? (Score:5, Funny)
Except for that line of 50 cars behind your bike-pedaling ass. They're all blowing veins in their foreheads because the goddamn speed limit is fucking 55 goddamn miles per hour and some SHITPOT on a fucking mountain bike is in their way when they just want to get home so they can drink a glass of bourbon and watch some Letterman, for christsakes, is that too fucking much to ask from you kids these days on your GODDAMN MOUNTAIN BIKES and your FUCKING RAZOR SCOOTERS and your DAMNED ROLLERSKATES, when all I want to do is finish my fucking commute and see if maybe I can get a piece of tang from my wife who's been all, "Oh, it's that time of the month and anyway I have a headache and feel all bloated" when I know goddamn well that her last period was only two weeks ago and there's no Playtex wrappers in the bathroom trashcan besides, and the damn kids are all whiny about how mean I'm being when I ground them because they didn't do their goddamn homework again, and then they start telling me all about how when Uncle Steve comes over during the day to visit Mommy that he's much nicer than I am, and then I have to go back into the bedroom and there's my cheating tramp of a wife on the phone -- with STEVE, Steve my best friend for nine years and I took his dog to the vet when it got hit by one of you goddamn CYCLISTS and bled all over the brand new top-grain Italian leather interior, Steve who was the best man at my wedding and helped me cover it up when Tommy Myers OD'ed at the bachelor party, and now he's on the phone with my GODDAMN WIFE and I know what I have to do, which I is why I kept my pistol all nice and clean and loaded in the first place, and when that first round explodes forth from the barrel, all pyrotechnic magic and cordite, it's like the first time I was ever with her and I couldn't control myself and it was all over before she even had her blouse unbuttoned, for christsakes, and now she's dead in a puddle of blood and I'm screaming into the phone, "Did you hear that, Steve, old buddy OLD PAL?! I'm coming for you next!"
On second thought, maybe I'll just stay at work and put in a little overtime.
Parent
Segway Jousting... (Score:3, Funny)
as soon as Segway prices drop to the $300 range ?
Call them what you will (Score:2, Funny)
Apparantly, we've been scammed by educators everywhere.
It's actually pretty safe (Score:5, Informative)
I must say, I was impressed.
First, if you're riding a segway at it's top speed of about 14 MPH, you can stop in about 15 feet- a runner going that fast takes about 20 feet to stop.
Second, the junior engineer there, a year out of UNH, made a point of running over the senior engineers toes many times. No injury, he was walking around fine.
Third, he also made a point of running into the senior engineer a number of times. Getting hit by one of those things is no worse then getting hit by someone who weighs 75 pounds more then you do.
It turns on a dime, stops and starts quick, is highly manuevarable, and very easy to use- they let a couple of my proffessors check it out. I wouldn't have any problem sharing a sidewalk with it. It has a number of stopping, size, and manuvering advantages over roller skates and bicycles, wich aren't allowed on most sidewalks.
That being said, it looks like an amusing toy with some very good aplications, but I don't think it's going to revolutionize transportation outside of a few circles.
Re:It's actually pretty safe (Score:4, Insightful)
On a street, where you have rules about right-of-way, and where you can count on people to *look* before they enter traffic, that sort of stopping distance is fine. On a sidewalk, where anyone in front of you can change direction on a dime, where people can appear from corners or doorway with no warning, it's a disaster.
14 mph is about a 4-minute mile, right? Isn't that pretty close to a flat-out sprint for the mortals among us? Would you really feel safe sprinting on a city sidewalk on a regular basis?
Actually, getting hit by a runner 75 pounds heavier than me who sounds extremely unpleasant. Not something I would want to be happening on a regular basis on the sidewalks in my town; would you?
Collisions with motor vehicles are also going to be a problem: note that you do *not* escape conflicts with cars by riding on the sidewalk. Instead, every driveway and intersection represents a potential conflict with a motorist, and motorists are *not* going to be looking out for people moving at high speeds on the sidewalk. (Think about where you look when you pull into or out of your driveway--would you see someone approaching from the wrong direction on the sidewalk in time to avoid a collision?) This is the reason that, by some estimates, sidewalk cyclists have double the accident rates of road cyclists. The same principles apply to segway users.
Sounds like the Segway people have a pretty good line; perhaps I shouldn't be so amazed that they're getting away with buying this kind of legislation. But they really need some opposition. Here's one summary of the issue from the point of view of pedestrian advocates [americawalks.org].
--Bruce Fields
Parent
Re:It's actually pretty safe (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes; go to any university town and watch the students on bicycles. They're doing those kinds of speeds and faster, on crowded sidewalks. This is the reason that some cities ban cycling on the sidewalks downtown. I agree, you'd think the cyclists would be smarter than that, but a bicycle is seductive--it's *hard* to slow down to wobble along at a walking pace when you know you could be gliding along at 15+ mph.
I think they must be convinced somehow that nothing too bad can happen to them, no matter how they ride, as long as they stay on the sidewalk--until the day when they find themselves flying across the hood of a car driven by someone who (not suprisingly) didn't see them while making a left turn across a crosswalk, at which point their life flashes before their eyes, and they ditch cycling, go buy an SUV, and live the rest of their life encased in a big steel security blanket.
Somehow I think we've all accepted this idea that "sidewalk == safe" and "road == dangerous" and in doing so we've lost our ability to reason sensibly about traffic safety.
--Bruce Fields
Re:It's actually pretty safe (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm curious as to where you get that "20 feet" number. Curious enough, in fact, to step outside for a quick drill... From a speed of around 14 MPH (about a 16 second 100 pace) I stopped in 5 feet. Of course, I knew when I was going to stop so reaction time didn't come into play, but assuming a moderately slow reaction time (0.2 seconds) at that speed that only adds 4 feet. To be sure, stopping that quickly puts some undesirable stress on a person's legs, but in a panic-stop situation that's not an issue. So don't dismiss the human body too quickly.
Parent
Have they crash tested Segways yet? (Score:2, Interesting)
I crashed a Segway HT... (Score:5, Funny)
I did however, crash the Segway [pusateri.org] and almost break it.
The link leads to a page with a 3MB Quicktime movie of the incident.
Re:I crashed a Segway HT... (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to their brutal in house testing, they gave the segway to some army special forces evaluation guys, and had them beat the shit out of it.
They couldn't break it. And it turns out, the in-house brutalizing Segway did before releasing it was more brutal then the army dished out.
(From a recent visit by segway engineers to my school)
Parent
It was turned off (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Sinclair C5 (Score:5, Funny)
Although superficially very different, the C5 and the Segway try to solve similar problems of personal mobility without being a car or motorbike. The Segway is undoubtably more advanced (and several times the price) but like the C5 is: small (one person, no luggage), exposed, slow and makes you look like a dork.
I'm not sure I see why the Segway won't go the same way as the C5. I certainly wouldn't buy any stock in Segway.
I wonder who will be the first to... (Score:5, Funny)
"overclock" it to do 60 mph.
put a really large tires and ride over other segway crushing it.
dissect it and puts it's pictures of it's guts online and get slashdotted.
have their segway malfunction and end up doing a cartwheel on a steep sidewalk.
do all sort of cool tricks with it like a freestyle bike.
fall off the thing and get hurt and decides to sue Dean Kamen.
ride segway while drunk as a skunk and get charged with DWI.
have their segway run out of battery on the side of the road and have to call AAA to tow it.
hit a pedestrian.
hit a pedestrian and run off.
have their segway tiretracks link them to a crime they committed.
find their segway minus wheels sitting on concrete blocks on the side of the road.
steal it.
get caught trying to steal it.
track down a stolen segway by using hidden GPS.
strap a jet rocket and attempt to break segway land speed record.
----
jk
We'll approve it and subsidise your wages bill (Score:5, Insightful)
pretty sad (Score:3, Interesting)
Electrically assisted bicycles like this [electricbetterbikes.com] are in a legal limbo: you can't legally use them on bike paths in many places, you can't ride them as fast as a bicycle, and some variants require motorcycle licenses. Yet, they are suitable and highly efficient for travel and commuting.
Similarly, innovative scooters like the BMW C1 (a scooter with a secure passenger cell) fail to get approval in the US, even though they passed lots of safety and real-world tests in Europe.
Yet, a high-tech gizmo like the Segway just breezes through regulatory approvals, probably based on the excellent marketing and celebrity endorsements behind it. First, drivers have to engage in an arms-race with SUVs on the road; will pedestrians now all have to upgrade to Segways in order to use sidewalks safely?
Re:sidewalks? BIKELANES! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:BikeRoads (Score:4, Interesting)
The correct thing to do in this situation is to first merge right (giving cyclists already there the right of way, just as if you're doing a regular lane merge), and then take the right turn. But then some cyclists who think bike lanes are *never* to be used by cars get mad at you. The whole situation is a confusing to everyone, which is why I prefer to just bike on the road and ride like a regular vehicle--then we all understand the rules.
But those separate thoroughfares are still going to have to intersect the regular road system at regular intervals, and getting those intersections right is really important--intersections are where most accidents happen. Try to work out how to have two entirely separate road systems superimposed on each other with safe intersections that don't cause everyone concerned unnecessary delays, and you'll quickly realize it's not worth the trouble.
Just think of bikes as skinny little cars, and everything will make more sense.
--Bruce Fields
Parent