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Comment by techiferous | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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