Segway: Will you buy one?

"Help! I can't ride my Segway because these singing monkeys keep flying out of my ass!"

is that anything like a brompton cocktail?

Do you at least get one of those cute helmets included?

the almighty genious dean kamen will transform all of our puny urban lives. hooray!

1/2 as fast (not even counting how slow you'd have to go on a sidewalk to avoid clocking someone).

Makes Butt even bigger.

I predict people will line up, for about a year.

Should the speed you go have some relationship to your ability to handle the vehicle?

(Kinda like one of those remote-controlled blimps in Hammacher-Schlemmer - really cool to look at, and would be fun to play with, but really can't justify the purchase, especailly when my Amazon wish list is at over 800 items.)

Segways make much, much more sense than cars (which get stupider the more you look at them), but there is not the proper infrastructure for them. They are too big for sidewalks, and two small for roads.
If we had started in the 30s and 40s with segways, and built our cities accordingly, then they would have worked. But at this point its too late.

I would still rather walk/bicycle.

brompton bicycle
is that anything like a brompton cocktail?

not exactly, no.

Should the speed you go have some relationship to your ability to handle the vehicle?
Apparently when you buy one it comes with a green key, this limits the speed and responsiveness of the segway until you get used to riding one. About a month later they send you a red key which allows the thing to go at full speed and you can customize the responses of it to your own tastes.

They make so much sense to me because once you've paid for it transport is virtually free (pennies to charge it), they are very green -no emissions, and they get you out in the open.

Besides I want one with cream and chrome Caddy-style fairing and 100 wing-mirrors.

i think i'll get myself this one
http://www.geocities.com/picturesref/strida.jpg

So what is the latest segway news on the street? Have they actually sold, like, any? And when will JETPACKS become standard? Huh?

http://www.segway.com/images/h/h/home_main.jpg

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/ALLPOLITICS/06/13/bush.weekend.ap/story.segway.fall.ap.jpg

"Get off of the Segway, Motherf*cker!"

..and then the guy races off at 12 MPH.

I saw Dan Rather do a piece on him for 60 Minutes II, and he was at an invention fair at Disney World as the keynote speaker. He rolled out to the podium on a Segway, grabbed a mic, and showed off his Hot Wheels to the science geeks.

He thought he was some super cool hustler on that piece of shit, and I wanted to see it flip over.

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/08/segway.jpg

such a joke - are they still making these?

between 2003 and 2007, one man alone has justified the continued production of these things

"...Selfish Michael..."

I saw cops (maybe just parking cops?) on them all over Chicago.

Have they gone way down in price yet?

the only place I've seen them in use has been at Google... its just bizarre to me that anyone would conlcude that the main transportation problem facing humanity is that people walk too much.

they got hella segway cops in DC now too. I would hate to have to run from one of these guys, they can seriously book it on asphault.

how Judge Dredd

Dreaming of the day a Segway-chasing-crook vid shows up on youtube.

close enough

Awesome...
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45211000/jpg/_45211426_segway_getty466b.jpg

was that taken in the future?

I have laughed out loud every single time I have seen a Segway. Especially in Chicago when I saw 7-8 cops in a Segway row, gliding across Millennium Park.

Can it outrun forest fires? Especially if you're txting at the same time?

Or has he broken down and is calling for help?

wasn't that a scene from the end of the 3rd season of weeds?

Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

Yorkshire millionaire Jimi Heselden dies while testing cross-country version of upright, motorised 'green commuter' machine

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PeBc3Z0aTz0/RkCggk9nc_I/AAAAAAAAAH0/tWRinUMFx5k/s400/Segway+to+heaven.jpg

the one Segway guy in my town would dress up like a turn-of-the-century automobile enthusiast in aviator goggles, cap, brown coat & scarf. made the Segway look almost cool but him like a complete loon.

I keep thinking this would probably be the way Gob Bluth would go out.

lol @ the last paragraph in that Guardian article. "btw george bush fell off a segway once."

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v314/103/125/36910239/n36910239_37873944_6910.jpg

MOBILISE THE CORTEGE

EXIT THIS ROMAN SHELL!

(this being one of those times I see a news story that explains why this thread got revived)

jeez, it's like rain on your wedding day

not quite sure why the meteor is suddenly mourning the segway (three years late) but "more important than pantyhose and the internet" was a big claim

RIP Segway: 2001-2020

“More important than the internet” lol pic.twitter.com/O04eIdQtD7

— Sweet Meteor O'Death (@smod4real) April 8, 2023

RIP the Segway? Tell that to the flotilla of 'em I saw going around Strasbourg yesterday

they stopped making new ones = they will diminish and go into the west

Segway? It should be a business school topic of study. By one measure this was one of the most successful hype jobs in living memory. It raised massive amounts of interest and speculation ahead of the unveiling. But the hype was so over the top that it provoked an equally massive wave of disappointment and ridicule to the point where the product was treated as a joke. Not exactly the outcome they were hoping for.

I just noticed that in Paris there are now some with a vintage Vespa design : I don’t know what to think about that but it was surprising

They are still used for tours around Savannah. Maybe there are off brand parts keeping them running?

as the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6XZ2L8CG_Do/maxresdefault.jpg

The irony is that the idea wasn't necessarily bad. There are masses of e-scooters cluttering up pavements all over the world. Not so much in Paris. And I suppose with the primitive technology of 2001 something that size was inevitable. But it was just too big to be handy and too inflexible to be handy. If the world's cities had been rebuilt around it the world today might be a better world. There would be worth peace, and all the now-worthless oil would remain in the ground. Syria would be "the Dubai of the Middle East" and Dubai wouldn't exist and Brian Harvey would still be sane.

Incidentally this is why I love Ilxor. The original post has coverage of the Segway back when it was one day old. And by reading through the page - paying attention to the lengthy absences - you can see how it flourished and died. It was invented during the dot.com boom, launched a year after the dot.com crash, and yet it survived for twenty years.

It'll go the way of the first-generation Sony Aibo dogs. Ten years from now there'll be a subculture of people trying to keep them around. In a post-petrol world. Perhaps they are the future.

https://www.getyourguide.fr/paris-l16/paris-tour-de-ville-en-segway-t410022/

This is what they look like !

The other thing I was thinking of was the Smart car. The Mercedes Smart. Which to my surprise was actually launched in 1998, pre-millennium. It seems to have never made a profit. It was built in an expensive single-purpose factory co-financed by Swatch, there were several spin-off models that have all been cancelled, sales in the US have been cancelled, the petrol model is no longer on sale in the UK, and looking at the specifications its fuel economy was nice but no better than e.g. a Toyota Prius, which is a lot more practical, or indeed a regular diesel hatchback. And it didn't look particularly safe in a crash.

Things like the Smart and the Segway stand out because unlike e.g. a video game or a new MP3 player they're big and substantial, with garages and an infrastructure and an impact on the real world of mini-roundabouts and local councils and out-of-town shopping centres. And the creators hoped that they would change the world. And the idea wasn't necessarily bad, it's just that a tiny tiny car doesn't have space for sufficient battery power to be useful, so even the electric models aren't popular.

https://www.getyourguide.fr/paris-l16/paris-tour-de-ville-en-segway-t410022/

On the one hand it actually does make sense. There's a shield for your legs. So that you don't get cold legs. And it'll deflect petrol bombs.

Because if there's one thing calculated to annoy protestors even more than a posh breakfast cereal restaurant it's a pimped-up Segway. A pimped-up Segway driving back and forth over a photograph of Greta Gerwig. Back and forth. Grinding her face into the dirt. Back and forth. Back and forth. I am drunk as I write this. A pimped-up Segway slithering over a photograph of Greta Gerwig, and surviving.

But Vespas are Italian. What's the the connection with Paris?

No idea ! Unless Paris being Napoleon’s Nouvelle Rome…
They should have made Segways that look like a 2CV !

now COME ON!
https://media.tenor.com/76huE0QGTuAAAAAd/gob-segway.gif

Eheh they were worth it just for Gob

RIP Segway Polo online betting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaTfcyer2O8