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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

It's not practical to design everything in the world with the very slowest people in mind. The efficiency losses would be huge. Imagine if every pedestrian crossing light went for five minutes. Vehicular traffic would grind to a standstill.

That said, I see no reason why the people riding these things couldn't just move around other people. I rarely have problems with people on bicycles, because we can mutually avoid each other.

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Actually, there was a study in the UK a couple of years ago that didn't get acted on, but which demonstrated that pedestrian crossing lights in British streets allowed so little time for crossing that able-bodied teenagers had to hurry -- middle-aged, elderly, unfit, or handicapped people really need about triple the time.

The solution is probably a combination of the sensor-controlled systems showing up in newer crossings in the UK (IR sensors block traffic by setting a red light until the crossing is clear) and cutting down on automobile use in densely populated areas like urban cores. Ahem. (Hint: why should your one ton rolling steel status symbol trump anybody else's right to use the highway?)

The study was very flawed. The 85 percentile walking speed for pedestrians (1.2 m/s) is for when people start the crossing at the end of green man. So some 15 percent of the people are slower. However if youo take into account most people start crossing before the end of the green man, then the time is ample. "the sensor-controlled systems" - are hopelessly inefficient and actually confusing for pedestrians.

A countdown which displays the time until the red-man is best for a balance of all users.

The green man is intended as a sign that it's safe to _begin_ crossing the road - at least in the UK. You'll notice that the man changes away from Green long before the light sequence. That's intended.

In various places the green man will start to blink when there is seconds left before it changes over.

Doesn't really matter. The takeaway is that the light timings don't have to change. You would just make the man stop being green earlier.

How are you supposed to know how long it has been since the green man appeared? Presumably if it turned green while you were waiting, you would have started walking immediately. Do you have to wait until the next green man if you arrived at the intersection while the light was green?

If you are particularly slow, then yes. This is equivalent to getting at the intersection only a few seconds later, not a big deal.

"The very slowest people" are actually the majority: the elderly, the very young, the temporarily or permanently disabled- if you put all of those people together they're many more than the young, strong and fast.

What's more important, each and everyone of us, will inevitably, at some point in their lives be very young, elderly or disabled. In fact most of us will probably be each of those things during our lifetime.

So it's not so much a matter of efficiency as accepting the fact that human beings are not born with wheels, but with feet and that they should always get priority, despite any misunderstandings about what the purpose of "efficiency" is in the first place.

>"The very slowest people" are actually the majority: the elderly, the very young, the temporarily or permanently disabled

That is quite simply not true. http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html As you can clearly see, most of the population falls in the age range that has no trouble walking at a reasonable speed. I don't have exact figures on how much of the population is disabled or seriously injured at any given time, but experience says it's not enough to make up for the fact that the very young and the very old are very very far from constituting a majority.

I'll qualify my comment: "the very slowest people" are the majority _in the developed world_ where the median age is 35+ (Wikipedia). It's also where people are the most likely to use hoverboards.

In any case, you can dispute the numbers and it makes no difference. People are not born with wheels. We need space to walk about. By convention and by law, the pavement is not for vehicles.

Despite that, I'm prepared to share the pavement with people on wheels but it has to be absolutely clear that it's not my responsibility to avoid them. It's theirs. They are the ones choosing to put me at risk, they should take full responsibility for it. And watch where the bloody heck they go.

Bicycles aren't allowed on the sidewalk, either.

How fast do these go compared to a bicycle? I saw a few of them on the street and they didn't seem to be moving faster than a brisk walker.

My impression was that bikes are generally banned because they move fast enough to cause serious injury yet are silent enough that pedestrians don't hear them coming.

I've seen a few of these in London they aren't really faster than a fast walking speed which makes people who use them look very silly.

They are quite often laughably used in shopping centers or and super markets mostly because allot of the pavements in London are horribly uneven which probably doesn't provide a very good surface for those. I've seen 2 guys on those things at Westfield last weekend arguing with a bunch of confused staff that didn't knew how to treat them.

I don't really get this device it doesn't help you to commute any faster, it doesn't increase your pedestrian commute range if you aren't fit to walk you won't be able to use one of those (they got quite a stringy weight limit, and require quite a bit of effort to balance yourself on) anyhow.

It's a bit funny to see fit and young hipsters pretty much using a 500$ mobility scooter...

A quick search resulted in one with a official speed of 8MPH, or about 12-13KMH.

In the UK they are allowed on some sidewalks (or pavements) and often have their own lanes.

However, on most pavements it is still an offence but 'some' cyclists choose to overlook this point.

Bicycles may not be allowed on the sidewalk, but you'll still see plenty of them on the sidewalk anywhere there aren't good, separated bike lanes.

No one travelling on a sidewalk should go so fast that they are unable to avoid a stationary object.

Edit: extra word

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