Segway

One afternoon two weeks ago, I went for a brief ride on the Segway. My trip on this new invention lasted only two or three minutes but it was long enough to teach me how to operate this unique new contraption.

I felt privileged in having the inventor, Dean Kamen, serve as my instructor but I quickly discovered that you need no special talent to manage this ingenious form of individual transportation. It responds to simple controls that almost anyone can wield.

To go forward, all you have to do is bend your upper body slightly forward. That means, not a deep bow, but only a shallow inclination.  The machine responds as if to your inner desire to move ahead, little more than a whim.

The same kind of slight motion moves you backward. Again, you simply start to incline your upper body ever so slightly and the Segway slowly retreats. The gyroscopes and tilt sensors embedded in the machine make it immediately responsive to these bodily motions.

To turn, you revolve a steering grip on the left handlebar and the Segway starts to move in a circle. To stop – well that’s another story. You may remember hearing about President Bush falling off the thing.

What sometimes makes people fall is a low power level in the battery. This can happen if, for instance, the rider speeds up abruptly. While I was drafting this column, word came from the Consumer Product Safety Commission announcing a voluntary product recall to install software warning of low battery levels.

My opportunity to get acquainted with both the Segway and its inventor opened up during a conference at MIT’s AgeLab. Professionals interested in improving transportation for older people came from 12 countries and 16 universities to report on their research and to talk about new technology designed to help mobility. The Segway presentation was only one of many made during the two day series of meetings but easily the most dramatic.

Dean Kamen, a short, thin dark-eyed middle-ager, arrived flamboyantly, driving into the room on his invention. All during his talk, the speaker stood on the scooter, moving it forward and back and often turning around in circles.

Kamen turns out to be an impassioned evangelist for his human transporter, as it is also called. He takes pride in having developed, along with his engineers, a device that he considers “a unique and lasting contribution to society.”

Like many others at the conference, I was swept away by the ingenuity of the contraption and felt tempted to credit every claim Kamen made for it. Afterward, some of us crowded around him and vied for the chance to try it out. For the moment, at least, $5,000 did not seem too much to pay for such a valuable device.

Since then, however, I have consulted Astrid Dodds, a friend and neighbor, who has been following the Segway saga in Massachusetts. A woman with deep concern for the public interest, she has raised my consciousness about the drawbacks of this new invention.

At least 40 states have already approved the Segway for use on sidewalks, though most have left the final decision to cities and towns. Astrid Dodds attributes this quick response to “legislators lining up because of the interesting gee-whiz technology.” They did not stop long enough to consider some of the negatives likely to result for both older citizens and the public in general.  

A Segway-related proposal, H. 1150, currently faces reworking in the Joint Committee on Public Safety of the Massachusetts legislature. So much protest about sidewalk use for the Segway has emerged that the bill is likely to impose serious restrictions.  Also the legislation will likely allow cities and towns to make their own decisions regarding usage.

As a devout daily pedestrian myself, I envision problems galore arising from adding Segways to our sidewalks. Already, I have trouble enough coping with bicycle riders, too many of whom use sidewalks illegally and operate by their own rules, not the public’s. They often menace me and other walkers, making us wary of getting knocked down or otherwise injured.

What has happened in places where the Segway has been approved for sidewalk use, no one seems to know. As Astrid Dodds points out, statistics are not available for accidents that do not result in the police being called. Of course, there may be little or nothing to report from those states that have precious few sidewalks to begin with.

It surprises me that among the professionals at the MIT conference not a single person raised doubts about the Segway’s suitability for use in our communities. Perhaps that means these academics do not use sidewalks very much. As noted above, I do, so I feel conflicted. That’s because I love both urban walking and also new technology with its promise of further improving the life of us elders.

Richard Griffin