Tough road ahead for Segway high-tech scooter

By ANDREW GUMBEL

Remember the Segway, the mystery invention hailed not so long ago as the Next Big Thing and then revealed to be a super high-tech, environment-friendly scooter?

No new-fangled gadget can boast even a fraction of the enthusiastic media coverage that accompanied the unveiling of the Segway's prototype and yet, less than two months before its official launch, the urban vehicle to end all urban vehicles is running into difficulties.

Selective testing of the Segway in different cities around the United States has prompted a flurry of critical reports, including concern about the safety of old and disabled people who stumble into its path and the health implications of an already overweight nation being offered yet another excuse to stop walking.

Despite heavy lobbying efforts, several key states, including New York and Texas, have yet to enact legislation permitting the Segway on city pavements, where its inventors say it belongs.

The president of the company launching the Segway recently quit, suggesting growing discontent in the corporate ranks.

Perhaps most damagingly, the city of San Francisco - in theory the ideal venue for a Segway craze because of its environmental consciousness, its compact layout and its pedestrian-deterrent steep hills - has introduced a blanket ban on Segway use on the city's pavements.

"There were statistics submitted to us about injuries, and the Segways themselves did not have adequate safety features to alert people they might be behind them," said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco city councillor who led the ban effort.

"The bloom is off the rose ... I think a lot of it was ballyhoo. Now, with people looking at the practicality and cost and possible liabilities, I think they're abandoning their enthusiasm about it."

San Francisco was one of the first places where municipal workers, notably postmen, were invited to try out the Segway. Nobody disputes the Machine is an ingenious contraption, with its multiple gyroscopes and mini-computers that keep the user balanced, but it is also a 36kg lump of metal that travels three or four times the speed of other pavement-users. And that has legislators worried, especially in cities with heavy pedestrian traffic - the very cities that Segway had hoped to conquer first.

Although the state of California has passed legislation permitting Segways on to pavements, individual cities have the right to opt out. Aside from San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz and Sacramento are considering their own bans. Los Angeles doesn't seem to have a problem permitting Segways on its pavements, but then again nobody walks in LA and in many neighbourhoods there is no pavement at all.

In Illinois, the state legislature left the Segway issue to the discretion of individual cities. Chicago has yet to pass an ordinance allowing the scooters on its pavements.

Segway LLC, as the production company is called, argues that the scooters have been tested for 100,000 hours in city streets without a single instance of injury.

But injury is only one of the concerns that its detractors have. One postman in Concord, New Hampshire, a city prone to severe bouts of cold, said he needed to keep moving in the winter months. "You can't keep warm if you're not walking," he said. "You end up like a frozen popsicle on a stick."

The Segway is the brainchild of Dean Kamen, a New Hampshire-based inventor previously responsible for some remarkable advances in medical technology, including portable kidney dialysis machines. He got the world gossiping about the Segway, then known simply by the codeword "Ginger", two years ago, thanks to some enthusiastic endorsements from internet entrepreneur friends in Silicon Valley.

Rather like the dot.com bubble, however, the enthusiasm has since waned as it became clear the Segway's chances depended heavily on the prowess of its lobbyists campaigning to permit the vehicle to travel on city pavements. The thinking is that consumers will find it too dangerous to use on all but the most residential roadways.

Even after it launches in March, the Segway will not be widely available in stores. At first it will be available exclusively from the online retailer Amazon.com, where it is being advertised for just under US$5000 ($9100). Users will have to undergo several hours of specialist training before they will be allowed to take the vehicle out on the street - another inconvenience that consumers may bristle at.

- INDEPENDENT