All Segways recalled

AP ^ | 9/26/2003

[presidio9]

The maker of the Segway Human Transporter has agreed to recall the motorized scooters because riders have been injured falling off when its batteries are low. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall Friday, saying that three people had been injured. One suffered a head wound and needed stitches.

[KC_for_Freedom]

This is individual responsibility which the company is not responsible for. The Segway is a great invention.

I'm all for individual responsibility, and would cancel helmet laws and seat belt laws because of their restriction on individual freedom. I believe the solution with the segway is to require proof of personal insurance when a buyer takes one home.

But if I put my safety engineering hat on, an invention that relies on a warning to avoid a dangerous situation is not as good as an invention that provides a positive interlock. Now if the electronic stability system fails at low voltage (and there is no other way), then a superior device would fail gracefully, coming to a stop and permitting the rider to get off without a fall.

To simply provide an indicator which will be ignorred or maybe lead to a higher sense of insecurity as one tries to make it to a battery charger is probably not sufficient if the level of severity of the injury is major.

[traumer]

"The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall Friday, saying that three people had been injured. One suffered a head wound and needed stitches...."

Paging my lawyers !!

[GalaxieFiveHundred]

Better to play it safe and just get one of these babies!

[Chad Fairbanks]

Because idiots would ignore the low battery warning, and the backup woud give them 15-20 minutes extra before they fall off and hurt themselves ;0)

[AgentEcho]

Because he gave people too much credit. It had a battery charge display. IT runs on batteries. They get low, it doesn't work right. It has an onboard charger. Stop, plug it in, and be on your way.

Does your TV remote work right when the battery is low? Unbelievable. You folks are so willing to jump on the company when they're blamed for people not having common sence.

To me it's the same thing as the lady blaming McDonalds for having hot coffee that she spills on herself.

Æ

[Calvin Locke]

I think you're being hard on the Segway. Being glad it failed isn't the right attitude to have. I, also, would have been surprised if it succeeded, for a lot of your aforementioned reasons.

Being happy that it failed because a bunch of bureaucrats with nothing better to do decided that you're too stupid to pay
attention to a battery low indicator is another thing.

I believed it was a worthwhile attempt, as long it wasn't on the taxpayer dime.

[dogbrain]

[SamAdams76]

The "dork" factor killed the Segway in my opinion. The decision by Kamen (or his marketing dept.) to feature riders of the Segway in bicycle helmets in publicity photos was a disaster. Unless you have an athletic build and you are actually riding a real bicycle in full biking gear, a bicycle helmet makes you look like a dork - period. BTW, there is no way an overweight person will ever look like anything other than a dork with either a bicycle or a bicycle helmet.

Finally, if these things are supposed to be so safe, why the need for crash helmets in the first place?

I think Kamen would have had more success with these things if there was a low-key rollout. Quietly put a few out here and there and let the buzz and word-of-mouth spread. Imagine leasing a kiosk at Disneyland or some other huge theme park and renting them out for the day with a free 15-minute lesson. That would have been very successful in my opinion and it also would have given the engineers a controlled opportunity to see how these things hold up under heavy use and work out the bugs.

[sully777]

There was a picture of President Bush falling off a segway in Maine this summer. The esablishment laughed at his supposed clumsiness and quipped at his stupidity, "Only Dubya could fall off a Segway!"

Appears they were wrong.

[Spruce]

You omitted the major downside to the Segway.

The warp-9 dork factor. This thing would make [insert coolest person you can think of] look like a dink!

[COBOL2Java]

I hear Arianna Huffington announced she's running to replace it. :-)

[Porterville]

Sorry, you don't seem to recognize the FTC code that a product being resonably used has to be resonably safe.

[blackie]

Two wheels have to be in line!

[CygnusXI]

Thanks alot man!!
I have a cold, and a stuffed nose....
...well it used to be stuffed, now I have snot all over my hands.
LOL!

[discostu]

That's not why it's failing. It's failing because it's overpriced for it's purpose, it's overpriced because it's poorly thought out and has more technology than is needed for the task, the recall is a symptom of that poor thinking. I'm happy because I predicted this thing would come to a bankrupt end when it was first unveiled and it just took one more giant leap to proving me right.

It's not a matter of people being too stupid to pay attention to an indicator light (if such a light even exists). It's a matter of the thing being so poorly thought out that nobody asked the vital question "what happens when the batteries run dry", a device that absolutely positively has to have electricity to be able to move needs to have some thinking put into making it stop gracefully and safely when the batteries die. Given this things profile and weight if you're not someplace you can stop for a few hours to recharge this beast you've GOT TO keep going until you either get there or the batteries die, just like with a car. You don't just park your car because the low fuel light came on, you try to figure out where the nearest source of fuel is and do your best to get there. But at least with a car you can coast to a graceful stop. Segway didn't think it through, and now they're recalling it.

I believe it was a miserable attempt, too many wizbang engineers with their heads in the clouds, not enough realists asking tough questions. Doesn't matter if the money came from taxpayers or investors, they got bilked.

[RightWhale]

The original design, two wheels, one in front, one in back, with either pedal power or a motor, seems to work just fine. A lot of designs were tried over the years, including this side by side configuration, but only the design with the upward-curved front fork seems to have stood the test of time. Nature prefers certain designs: Segway isn't Nature-approved.

[EggsAckley]

Heheheh! That's what my new Chevy Astrovan feels like!

[discostu]

What if you're not someplace you can stop and plug it in? The innate problem with ALL electric vehicles is refuel time, they take hours to recharge vs the minutes it takes to put gas in a car. You can't always just stop for a few hours to recharge.

When my TV remote has dead batteries it doesn't throw me from my chair or leave me stranded. Modes of transportation have to take the fueling problem into consideration, Segway didn't.

The lady that spilled coffee on herself received 2nd degree burns, the coffee was WAY too hot to be served. That's why McD's paid out, you can't be serving beverages that will give people 2nd degree burns.

[Darksheare]

I like it, what is it and can I get it with armor and a front towing winch as well as internal roll bars?