I used to be a big longboarder, and after shattering my collarbone coming off a hill, I had to sell it. (My second big accident on it.)
Obviously, not much can be done about the physics of a big-headed, top heavy primate toppling, but do these boards have a way of governing their speed going down hills?
If so, I'm looking forward to buying one. I miss skateboarding.
Still ride it almost every day though :)
(I used to be a skateboarder. I know how much pain a tiny pebble can cause.)
That said, it also doesn't compare to bicycles with ~26" air-filled tires. You definitely have to pay close attention to the road surface.
> I've broken both arms in the first 6 months of riding.
Me closes the tab, backs away slowly....
A bit later I asked if he commuted on his boosted board and he said that he did everyday until recently because he had surgery after shattering his right elbow.
I asked, "Not from the boosted board right?"
He smiled and said he had hit a bit of oil.
Didn't exactly inspire confidence.
I went right back to motorcycle-riding after the bolts in my thumb healed up. :-)
Closest I have personally experienced was a fall off the back of a large horse onto hard packed dirt / loose gravel at a fast trot ~8 - 10mph + 5 vertical feet. But, with the right technique it was basically painless and I did not end up with a bruise or anything.
You'd still get scraped up and hurt, of course, but falling at 20 mph and not running into a brick wall doesn't have to result in broken bones.
When falling from something that's moving, you will continue to move when you hit the ground; to limit hurting yourself you need to roll and not skid. The way to do that is to put yourself into a ball, and to do it by instinct (as of course you don't have time to think about it).
From my own experience skating and teaching skating (inline, not board), one of the easiest ways to get injured in a fall is the "stick your hand out" reflex. Fall training mitigates this, ingraining habits to allow much larger areas of the body to take the impact, and ideally take it rolling. If you're going forward (doing the "superman") and have wrist guards or palm sliders, arms out can be ok. If you end up going more down than out (esp. many backward/side falls), it's likely a broken wrist or arm, right through any guard you might be wearing. (ask me how I know that one...)
The best preparation is just to get a regular skateboard (not a long board) and skate around on it on the sidewalk. This will help you get the balance and board handling down.
I highly recommend learning how to ollie on the regular board. The falling you do in learning how to ollie will help. Even if you can't ollie a boosted board, the board control you learn will help you manage riding over rough pavement. Also the ollie motion of shifting your weight can be used even on long boards to manage obstacles.
Finally, on the regular skateboard learn how to power slide. This will teach you how to balance your weight if the board is sliding sideways.
No reason you can't take your gym training outside and start falling on hard surfaces.
If you're going fast in a straight line it can handle a fairly rough road. The slower you're going the more likely an obstacle is to stop the board and throw you off, but of course the faster you're going the more it will hurt if it does :)
Carving + powered wheels + debris also makes it more likely for the board to slide out from under you.
Basically avoid all potholes/rough patches/sand/etc at first and over time take them on more aggressively as you get comfortable. When in doubt go around or stop and walk across.
And wear a fucking helmet.
You can practice running off the board by riding into a garden hose (this will also prevent damage to the board or trucks). You can make the hose more or less taut to make the stopping intensity higher or lower. What you are trying to do is maintain your momentum in the direction you are traveling, and your goal is to make this such a natural reaction that your body will automatically do it when something unexpected knocks the board out from under your feet.
"Making it a natural reaction" simply doesn't jive with physics when you're going a certain speed. Sorry, but what you said is dumb hippy logic.
If you're burning down mountain roads my advice would shift to suggesting knee and elbow pads.
Take safety seriously and remember that things can go bad any time, so go slow (but not too slow) when it's riskier. Knowing how to foot break and fall safely are also musts.
But seriously, the brakes work pretty well. You should still learn to footbrake.
o_O if the remote loses connection it doesn't default to gently applying the brakes?
Considering how everyone raves about how much thought has been put into these boards, that seems like a really big oversight!
If the remote emitted a warning sound a second before it started braking, then slowly started braking, that could work.
Also in my experience RF interference is extremely localized. Chances are it will reconnect once you travel ~15 feet.
BTW here's a map someone started of "dead zones": https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1BSgoslQB-0i16l...
It's kind of ridiculous to present that as an unsolvable problem dude.