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Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Segway Hype -- Or 'Muscles Not Motors'
Neal Peirce
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Faced with an embarrassing factory recall of all the 6,000 high-tech scooters it has sold so far, the Manchester, N.H., manufacturer Segway LLC may face a slowdown in its lobbying blitz aimed at legalizing its ``human transporters" on all the sidewalks of all America's states and communities.
The recall alert notes the danger of riders falling off scooters when they try to speed up abruptly when the unit's batteries are mostly depleted.
There's no doubt inventor Dean Kamen produced a modern wonder with the ``dynamic stabilization" technology that lets the Segway move forward or halt, using five gyroscopes and two tilt sensors to gauge a rider's center of gravity measured about 100 times a second.
Take a mental leap and imagine specially reserved lanes criss-crossing our cities that permit not just Segway riders but also bicyclists to zip along quietly at up to 12 miles per hour, bypassing stalled auto traffic, reducing pollution and congestion.
Sadly, Kamen's firm had no idea of waiting for special lanes for its invention, and certainly no inclination to collaborate with bicycling groups. It wanted clear access to a nation of sidewalks, immediately. So it launched a high-intensity blitz aimed at the 50 state legislatures, hiring influential lobbyists and wowing legislators with demonstrations of its zippy new machines.
The effort, begun less than two years ago, has been phenomenally successful -- permissive laws in 41 states. Most of these statutes say nothing about minimum age of operators, tests, safety helmets or other precautions. Some do allow localities to take exception: San Francisco, banning Segways from sidewalks last January, was the first. Officials, especially in older cities with narrower sidewalks, are leery about collisions between Segways and pedestrians.
As well they might be. Legislatures may be mesmerized into revoking the normal laws that bar motorized vehicles from sidewalks, notes a leading safety critic, Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
But what legislators can't do, Smith notes, is ``repeal the laws of Newtonian physics." The Segway involves a rider standing on a platform, with a high center of gravity, not seated, no restraint system, clipping along fairly rapidly. In rough terms, it is the SUV of the sidewalks. Give it a major bump or swerve, says Smith, and physical law dictates the driver will stay in motion -- and may impact anything in his path. Segway's manufacturer, charges Smith, has released zero data on the stopping distance or dynamic stability of its scooters.
``The Segway," he continues, ``is a motorized vehicle, no matter whether it stops by friction brakes or reverse torque, or whether it accelerates by use of a throttle or tilt sensors." It's similar, he insists, to motorized bikes, prohibited from sidewalks almost everywhere. A child darting where he or she is not expected, or a senior citizen unable to get out of the way, could be severely injured. Why should the $5,000 Segway be allowed to impair common peoples' safety on sidewalks that are designed for pedestrians to move, talk, stand and enjoy their communities?
In rebuttal, Segways have potentially significant uses -- to move about in large warehouses and factories, for example, or by local police or the military. They could put public transit stops within reach of more people, and provide alternatives to autos for short errands.
Yet for most people, bikes could do the same. Which raises the Segway's other inherent problem: more motorization in a nation already overly motorized. The gut problem, writes the San Francisco Weekly: ``Lard. Buckets of lard. Fat, rosy cheeks. Ample alabaster bellies. Arms that flap, legs that waddle, bodies by the millions shaking like bowls of jelly." Why, the paper asks, introduce ``a high-technology lard-making device just at the moment when America is suffocating from obesity?"
That's pretty harsh -- and so far only a few thousand Segways, way below company hopes and expectations, have been sold anyway. But it does remind me of my favorite slogan, discovered on the sign for the Onion River Sports shop in Montpelier, Vt. The three words speak volumes:
``Muscles Not Motors."
For elderly folk, there is a terrific substitute when unaided walking becomes too onerous. It's the 30-year-old, Swedish-made ``rollator," a compact four-rubber-tired contraption to push (and lean on as required). It has some grocery cart space and a built-in bench. There is no motor. Tests (BEG ITAL)prove(END ITAL) that use of the rollator prolongs mobility, independence and agility and cuts down on hip fractures and other bone-related perils of old age.
For able-bodied people, combined bike and Segway paths make eminent sense because paths that work for one will work for the other. Instead of claiming miraculous invention and romancing politicos for sidewalk access, the Segway folks would do well to sit down with advocates of the humble bicycle for talks on expanding the special city and rural pathways so abundant in Europe but so sorely lacking here.
Contact Neal Peirce at nrp@citistates.com.
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