Segways meet resistance in Boston neighborhood | Hacker News Reader

Segways meet resistance in Boston neighborhood

universalhub.com

11 pointsilamont24 comments

I have a Segway.

I always stop when other people are walking toward me on the sidewalk; it makes them more comfortable.

The other important thing to watch out for are blind corners - where obstacles prevent others from seeing you. I do my very best to stop so that I don't surprise anyone.

Why doesn't this guy just push for the ability to issue tickets to impolite Segway users instead?

Banning Segways has repercussions that this guy probably hasn't considered. Remember that nationwide, well over a third of all Segway users are physically disabled in some way, and around here, at least two of the three owners that I know are.

Note that the discussion in Boston also relates to complaints in the North End, where tourists can rent Segways and local residents complain about the vehicles and the attitudes of the owner of the rental service. Background here:

http://www.universalhub.com/2010/some-north-enders-fed-tour-...

I think doing a neighborhood wide ban would be excessive, but it makes sense for the streets mentioned. Hanover St. gets so crowded on some days that pedestrians will walk in the road in order to pass people. I don't even see how someone would be able to use a Segway when it is that congested.

Segways are annoying, but can't Boston just let people figure out how to share space on the sidwalk without more regulations?

"In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots".

Take the subway in Boston. You'd be baffled at the ingress/egress difficulties encountered. People block the doors. Passengers boarding don't wait for passengers departing to exit the cars before they attempt to force their way in. People are reluctant to take a seat between other people (especially women when the seat is between two men), reducing standing space. Standing passengers do not move towards the ends or center of the cars to allow more passengers to board.

This is usually accompanied by at least 30 seconds of announcements from the on-board spotter over the train's intercom system. Per stop. I've seen this take as long as 90 seconds.

Wow, that's pretty awful. I've only been living in NYC for 2 years, but I've totally absorbed all of these etiquette rules that are fairly well ingrained in the local culture. Still, I find myself gritting my teeth a few times a week when they are breached. I've never thought of myself as a tense person, but I swear my body temperature goes up a few degrees when boarding passengers either stand right in front the door, blocking those exiting, or worse, attempt to board through the exiting passengers, somehow.

I might need medication if I ever move to Boston ;)

Why can't people who insist on traveling around on big mechanical contrivances figure out a way to share the road with cars?

Some Boston sidewalks are crowded and narrow, so I can see how adding a segway, which is about twice as wide as a person, is not a welcome addition.

Width of a Segway: 25"

Width of a Bugaboo Cameleon: 23.9"

I'd like to see the Boston city council try to ban strollers.

Segways can be banned on pure aesthetics.

That's a specious comparison. People make all sorts of concessions for people with children. People who want to drive their mechanical devices on the sidewalk, not so much.

Yeah, the number of upmods that guy is getting is giving me an uneasy feeling. It's about the starkest apples vs. oranges fallacy I've ever seen. Can someone actually present a non-idiotic argument as to why motor vehicles should be allowed on sidewalks? Unless you're disabled, I can't even conceive of it. Nothing but an ugly menace.

So I guess the question is - should disabled people be able to use these devices on the sidewalks (with appropriate license/plate)? And should non-disabled folks be able to use them in bike lanes? Etc? Honest question, I have never ridden a Segway but want to try it.

From the article, the complain seems to be the fact that the Segway can be dangerous to the other pedestrians. Don't forget that it can carry an adult, and with it, its momentum is much larger than some small kid in a stroller. Of course, if this is the case, they should also ban the jogging strollers...

Practically anything can be dangerous to anything. I almost got poked in the eye by an umbrella yesterday - perhaps those should be banned as well?

Instead of yet another regulation on the books, why not just punish those individuals that actually cause injury to others, using the already existing mechanisms for doing so? That way the individuals who can navigate down a sidewalk without harming others can be left in peace.

I live in Boston without a car. My daily "commute" and my "trips around town" are all on the sidewalk. My sidewalk is analogous to your road. Some sidewalks are very crowded and sometimes there are small traffic jams (a group of people walking slowly that I can't get around).

I would not welcome segways on crowded sidewalks. The road analogy would be huge double-wide trucks traveling about 100 mph on your daily interstate commute. Ignore the danger--the comparison is to how annoying it would be.

Strollers are slower than segways and do not come up behind you trying to pass you.

Crowds are actually what segways are best at. You can easily control your speed and turn in place. There is a reason mall cops use them rather then bikes.

I thought it was because they were too obese to walk from one end of the mall to the other.

I read that some airports use them because seeing police running could cause people to panic in an emergency. Not so with helmet-wearing cops on segways.

Well, you can't rid bicycles on the sidewalks in most major cities either. So I don't think it's an example of people fearing new and different modes of transportation.

Ah, the Segway. Remember when they were saying it was going to revolutionize travel, and then when it was revealed to be this dorky scooter, everyone let out a collective "oh..."?

Yeah it was called "It" during the pre-unveiling hype, while, everyone wondering what "It" was... I think Steve Jobs said something like "they are going to design cities around this thing."

And now Boston says "This is a walkable city, not a Segway city."

It seems like it'd be a great topic for a marketing case study.

Too bad they didn't put as much effort into making you not look ridiculous riding it.

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