There are a lot of good reasons for San Francisco and any other city with a significant walking population (hopefully all of them) and urban planners with brains to ban the Segway.
Oddly enough, the best argument I've seen for this comes from Greg Easterbrook (senior editor of The New Republic and Football Columnist) who takes a shot at it in his TMQ colum on ESPN.com.
[quote] Segway: the SUV of the Sidewalk Amazon.com has exclusive marketing rights to the first production run of the Segway rolling metal broomstick. For a nonrefundable deposit of $495, Amazon will grant you a place in line to spend $4,950 on a Segway; preposterously, if you write an essay on why you love Segways, Amazon might deliver one by Christmas. Requiring customers to write an essay for permission to spend $4,950! Of course, colleges require customers to write an essay for permission to spend $125,000.
You'll love being passed on the sidewalk by some rich guy using a cell phone while riding his Segway.TMQ, who recently inspected a Segway in Aspen, Colo. -- I waved as Nan departed on her ultra-glamorous itinerary -- predicts these devices will be a, what's the word, oh yeah, fiasco. Why? They will become the SUVs of the sidewalk.
Everyone who walks will intensely hate Segways. The manufacturer has already persuaded 32 states to certify these monstrosities for use on sidewalks; without that permission, no one would buy one. But the Segway is 200 pounds of metal with a 200-pound rider atop moving 12 mph, velocity of someone who runs track in the 100-meter event. This means a pedestrian struck by a Segway will be hit by 400 pounds moving at sprinter speed. Being struck by a Segway roaring down the sidewalk will be significantly worse than being popped by an NFL linebacker at maximum warp. The things will simply be dangerous.
Segways are also likely to be driven in a selfish manner. They will clog downtown sidewalks, depriving space to regular pedestrians; and sidewalks in downtown New York, Boston and, especially, London are already so crowded you practically have to walk at the curb. People atop Segways will feel that, as the SUVs of the sidewalk, everyone else should jump out of their way. Riders will barrel along on these monstrosities, terrorizing pedestrians, injuring people without accountability, expecting women and children to lunge aside. One of the few quasi-civilized experiences left in big-city downtowns -- walking along, enjoying the day, checking out babes/hunks and looking in shop windows -- could become a nerve-wracking exasperation.
Probably the Segway will be a bust, considering the thing is expensive and hopelessly impractical: where do you put it when you're not riding it? Are you going to carry a 200-pound object in the elevator up to the office with you? Alternatively, Segway's manufacturer may be driven out of business once liability suits begin rolling. Segways are going to cause harm when used as intended, which is a formula to warm the tort lawyer's heart.
But if somehow Segways do catch on, their main effect on society will be to make strolling so unpleasant and risky that people who presently use the subway (TMQ, for example) will resort to driving in order to be off the sidewalks and safe from Segways. Which means the enviro-green marketing of this contraption is a total fiction. Discouraging people from walking in order to get them to ride a dangerous $5,000 hulk of metal that consumes energy! How very Earth-friendly. <hr></blockquote>
I think its a pretty devastating argument, myself.
Okay, I am really not trying to be snide about this. How will it change the way that cities will look? And who will pay for this change? As it has been said, I can see it for mail people and it has great use in factories, but I can't really see it in other situations. I've lived in New York, and the sidewalks there are just too crowded to have these things on them. And I can guarantee that if they put dedicated Segway lanes on the streets, well, you won't want to use them. Here in Los Angeles the sidewalks barely have cub cuts for the wheelchair-bound. A good quarter of the streets in my area have sidewalks that are seriously heaved from various trees (Ficus mainly) that were planted because they grew quickly as shade trees. Who is going to pay to make all those cuts and redo all these sidewalks to be the smooth surface that the rider will need? Are they going to just cut down the trees so the roots don't infringe on the sidewalks? That'll change the face of the city all right. And I can tell you that a dedicated Segway lane on Wilshire would be about as much fun as one on Park Avenue- you can just substitute Soccer moms on the phone in SUV's for crazed taxi drivers. What about the safety issue? I can be cited for riding my bike without a helmet. Will protective gear be required? Insurance? This is a motorised vehicle after all.
I live in an area with the most temperate weather imaginable. I have an easy 10 mile commute to my office downtown via public transportation. I have a grocery store three blocks away, and it is about a mile walk into the center of Beverly Hills from my place. Will this take the soccer mom out of her Escalade to go (alone) to the mall? I doubt it, and I wouldn't want to have her buzzing up silently behind me with her juggling shopping bags, latte and Nokia. In future, planned communities, this could be great. But I can't see that present day cities can be retrofitted at no great expense to have this fit in.
The only people I can see profiting from this is trial and product liability lawyers.
Comments
Oddly enough, the best argument I've seen for this comes from Greg Easterbrook (senior editor of The New Republic and Football Columnist) who takes a shot at it in his TMQ colum on ESPN.com.
The column in question can be found <a href="http://espn.go.com/page2/s/tmq/021217.htm"; target="_blank">here</a>
The relevant text is as follows:
[quote] Segway: the SUV of the Sidewalk Amazon.com has exclusive marketing rights to the first production run of the Segway rolling metal broomstick. For a nonrefundable deposit of $495, Amazon will grant you a place in line to spend $4,950 on a Segway; preposterously, if you write an essay on why you love Segways, Amazon might deliver one by Christmas. Requiring customers to write an essay for permission to spend $4,950! Of course, colleges require customers to write an essay for permission to spend $125,000.
You'll love being passed on the sidewalk by some rich guy using a cell phone while riding his Segway.TMQ, who recently inspected a Segway in Aspen, Colo. -- I waved as Nan departed on her ultra-glamorous itinerary -- predicts these devices will be a, what's the word, oh yeah, fiasco. Why? They will become the SUVs of the sidewalk.
Everyone who walks will intensely hate Segways. The manufacturer has already persuaded 32 states to certify these monstrosities for use on sidewalks; without that permission, no one would buy one. But the Segway is 200 pounds of metal with a 200-pound rider atop moving 12 mph, velocity of someone who runs track in the 100-meter event. This means a pedestrian struck by a Segway will be hit by 400 pounds moving at sprinter speed. Being struck by a Segway roaring down the sidewalk will be significantly worse than being popped by an NFL linebacker at maximum warp. The things will simply be dangerous.
Segways are also likely to be driven in a selfish manner. They will clog downtown sidewalks, depriving space to regular pedestrians; and sidewalks in downtown New York, Boston and, especially, London are already so crowded you practically have to walk at the curb. People atop Segways will feel that, as the SUVs of the sidewalk, everyone else should jump out of their way. Riders will barrel along on these monstrosities, terrorizing pedestrians, injuring people without accountability, expecting women and children to lunge aside. One of the few quasi-civilized experiences left in big-city downtowns -- walking along, enjoying the day, checking out babes/hunks and looking in shop windows -- could become a nerve-wracking exasperation.
Probably the Segway will be a bust, considering the thing is expensive and hopelessly impractical: where do you put it when you're not riding it? Are you going to carry a 200-pound object in the elevator up to the office with you? Alternatively, Segway's manufacturer may be driven out of business once liability suits begin rolling. Segways are going to cause harm when used as intended, which is a formula to warm the tort lawyer's heart.
But if somehow Segways do catch on, their main effect on society will be to make strolling so unpleasant and risky that people who presently use the subway (TMQ, for example) will resort to driving in order to be off the sidewalks and safe from Segways. Which means the enviro-green marketing of this contraption is a total fiction. Discouraging people from walking in order to get them to ride a dangerous $5,000 hulk of metal that consumes energy! How very Earth-friendly. <hr></blockquote>
I think its a pretty devastating argument, myself.
solfege
Oh, trust me that they will be held accountable. If I see one on any sidewalk in my town, I have a strong feeling I will be hit and injured.
Seeing as though the thing costs so much, I'm sure the owner won't have too hard of a time paying up after the lawsuit.
I live in an area with the most temperate weather imaginable. I have an easy 10 mile commute to my office downtown via public transportation. I have a grocery store three blocks away, and it is about a mile walk into the center of Beverly Hills from my place. Will this take the soccer mom out of her Escalade to go (alone) to the mall? I doubt it, and I wouldn't want to have her buzzing up silently behind me with her juggling shopping bags, latte and Nokia. In future, planned communities, this could be great. But I can't see that present day cities can be retrofitted at no great expense to have this fit in.
The only people I can see profiting from this is trial and product liability lawyers.