Posted on 01/20/2003 6:06:58 AM PST by NewHampshireDuo
You can’t ride your Segway in the City by the Bay anymore.
As of today — just about a month shy of going mainstream — the Segway Personal Transporter has been banned from San Francisco sidewalks for safety reasons.
San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown Jr., who a year ago joined the hoopla celebrating Segway’s introduction, let pass a city ordinance banning the high-tech scooter when the city’s Board of Supervisors recently voted 9-2 to outlaw the Segway on city sidewalks, spokesman P.J. Johnston said.
Brown earlier had said he opposed the ban, and would veto it, “because he thinks it’s terrible public policy to ban a new technology outright before that technology is even tested in the city, before there is any meaningful debate about pros and cons, before there is any thoughtful understanding of what the safety risks may in fact be,” Johnston said.
However, advocates for San Francisco’s elderly and disabled won the ear of the ban’s sponsor, Supervisor Chris Daly, who represents the downtown district, according to Otto Duffy, an intern to Daly, and a solid majority of supervisors, who eventually supported the measure.
Critics of the gyroscope-balanced, $5,000 scooters feared pedestrians might get hurt by the two-wheeled, 69-pound Segways which travel at speeds up to 12.5 mph — or three times faster than the typical pedestrian. The self-balancing machines go forward when a rider leans forward, and backwards when a rider leans to the rear.
“We don’t want to say that it doesn’t ever make sense. But in urban settings there isn’t enough room for all the pedestrians,” said Ellen Vanderslice, president of America WALKs, a Pedestrian advocacy group based in Portland, Ore.
In hilly San Francisco, officials feared Segways would cause more problems than they would solve, particularly for the disabled and senior citizens.
“There were statistics submitted to us about injuries and the Segways themselves did not have adequate safety features to alert people they might be behind them,” said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco supervisor who supported the ban.
No state is requiring that its drivers be trained, although some have set minimum age and helmet requirements.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ruled that the Segway is not a vehicle subject to its oversight. Late last year, Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute become the first university in the world to implement use of the Segway Human Transporter after acquiring three Segway HTs this past fall.
WPI’s campus police department has already started using two of the Segway HTs to make patrols around WPI’s 80-acre main campus easier.
The battery-operated, motorized devices, which are the brainchild of New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen, are being assembled at 14 Technology Drive in Bedford. Segway LLC has its corporate offices in the Manchester Millyard.
Segway officials say the scooters have been tested for 100,000 hours on city streets across the nation without injury.
Ammiano also said Segway’s publicity blitz rubbed officials the wrong way.
“Segway didn’t help themselves by hiring very expensive lobbyists,” he said. “I think that backfired on them, too.”
The company hired lobbying firms but has made no contributions to any public officials or candidates, said Matt Dailida, the company’s director of state government affairs. He said attempts to modify the ban in San Francisco were unsuccessful.
“It looks as if (San Francisco) will be the first city in the country, if not the world, to ban this new form of transportation from their jurisdiction,” Dailida said.
Segway Human Transporters, or HTs, have safely logged more than 50,000 hours of real time use in U.S. cities, Dailida said.
Tested by the U.S. Postal Service and put through industrial trials for the last year, the consumer version of Segway went on sale on Amazon.com in November for a price tag of $4,950, and are set to begin shipping in March.
So far, 33 states (including New Hampshire) have passed legislation that allows Segway HTs to operate on sidewalks. But California’s law, passed in August, allowed cities and towns to regulate or ban use of Segway HTs in their communities, as San Francisco has done.
In California, Santa Cruz, Oakland and San Mateo are considering joining San Francisco in banning Segways from sidewalks. There is no similar move in congested Los Angeles, city officials said.
I agree... I wouldn't give you $5 for a Segway, let alone $5000.
My point is that the people who sell them appear to be living in a fantasy world.
It's not a good thing that many (if not most)decision makers take bribes, but it IS a real thing.
And it's probably an eternal thing as well.
A 70 pound gizmo, doing 12 mph on a crowded sidewalk is a do-able thing, but it's just dicey enough in today's civil law environment to provide a little bit of friction...
The kind of friction that can almost always be greased by an envelope full of money.
It's been this way all my life, and my father's as well.
It's real simple... If you hate the idea of bribing people so much that you refuse to do it, your business options will always be constrained by your choice not to do so.
You seem to be the Segway guy here, and someone has surly thought of these problems.
This from "officials" who don't give a damn what drunken bums, petty criminals, and careless city bus drivers do to San Francisco's disabled and senior citizens on a daily basis...
I've been wondering what happens when some elderly rider has a stroke and falls forward while riding on the thing. Months later a decomposing body or skeleton is found riding down a lonely sidwalk?
That's pretty funny, in a distasteful way.
Yeah, it wouldn't fall over... until the batteries ran down. And how would you catch it? Someone would have to jump from one to another.
I can see it now: "Speed IV - A Segway to a better movie"
...the real reason the HT has been banned from San Francisco!
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