Quote:
Originally Posted by Pescador12
The epitaph I like is "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW-- What a Ride!"
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Yeah, that's exactly what happens to lots of folks alright! - Many of them at age 25 or 30
One of the reasons it took so long to bring the original Segway to the market was they kept finding things that could possibly cause the machine to toss the rider off, so they went to work engineering a solution to those problems. The final result was a machine which is about as safe as a bicycle - When the rider ends up on the ground, 99.9% of the time it was an operator error and not something caused by the machine
There are all sorts of 'Segway Laws' around the country and I suppose around the world as well. Most any locality can pass a law and get it on the books without needing any real proof of anything. Some cities will allow you to ride bicycles on sidewalks and some won't - The bicycles are the same, only the location is different. Segway laws are similar and probably enacted for the same reasons. When you have the public walking at 2 or 3 miles per hour and someone operating a Segway or a bicycle at 10 or 12 miles per hour, the very real possibility exists that a collision may occur, especially since the 'vehicle' is silently approaching pedestrians from the rear and they have no rear view mirrors to warn them they are being overtaken
When we ride on sidewalks (and we do that a lot) we always slow to pedestrian speed and never attempt to pass until the pedestrian knows we are there - Once they see us, they almost always step to one side so we can safely pass
When you find 'laws' which say Segway tour operators are OK to use the venue but individual owners are not, it's usually to protect the tour business I suspect and not any indication that riders who own their own Segways are less safe - Actually, the opposite it true. As someone who first rode a Seg on a tour, I can assure you that many tour riders are people who have never set foot on a Seg before and many of them are barely able to maintain control, let alone take any evasive action to avoid a problem of any kind. After owning your own Seg for 6 months or a year, you are easily 10 or 20 times better at controlling it than you were on your first ride - Similar to you on your 4 wheeler I suspect
When you think about it, Segs
must be pretty darned safe and fool-proof to enable tour operators to guide a bunch of often older rookies who haven't set foot on a Seg before the day of the tour. Many of them probably haven't even ridden a bicycle for the past 20 or 30 years. Yet they safely take to the sidewalks after watching a 10 minute video and getting a single 10 minute training session on the Seg. If you were 50 or 60 years of age and had never thrown a leg over a bicycle, you wouldn't be off riding the sidewalks after only 20 minutes of training!
For senior citizens, Segways are much safer and easier to control than a bicycle and I suspect most people would say the bicycle is a fairly safe device
Don