Segway’s quest for acclaim faces uphill climb in state
Tom Schindler loves his Segway. Since buying the motorized, gyroscopically balanced device in January, the 20-year-old junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has logged more than 700 miles cruising from campus to the grocery store and to visit friends at nearby Clark University or elsewhere in Worcester.
Certainly, he doesn't mind the attention from passersby or the thumbs-up and honks he inspires as he whirs around town.
"It's a great conversation starter," said Schindler, who admits to once charging a woman outside a bar $10 for a ride. "Everyone seems to open up a lot more when you're on a Segway than when you're walking."
Hip, urban, and urbane, with a dash of social consciousness: That was the future that Segway's founder, Dean Kamen, and the myriad company backers envisioned when they unleashed the Segway 2 years ago onto a market worked into anticipation by a marketing campaign built around the Segway's code name, Ginger. Yet Segway's future, at least in Massachusetts, is looking dimmer by the day.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts House lumped battery-powered Segways into a bill with high-speed, occasionally earsplitting, gas-fueled minimotorbikes, and banned both from sidewalks and bike paths. Under the measure, drivers of both devices would be confined to the street, required to obey the rules of the road and to be at least 16 years old with a driver's license.
The bill, which backers hope to advance to Governor Mitt Romney on Monday, makes Segway riders' blood boil and sends chills down the spine of Segway company executives, who hold out hope that, like the Model T in the early 20th century, the Segway will catch on with a transportation public that tends to cleave to habit and resist sudden changes.
"My first thought was: If this bill passes, I've got to sell my Segway, because it's totally pointless for me to own one if I can't ride on the sidewalk," Schindler said.
Marc Hodosh, a 31-year-old chief executive of a technology company who rides his Segway from his home in Brookline to business meetings in downtown Boston, says he would be similarly disheartened if the bill becomes law.
"It may mean that I end up polluting the environment by using my car more," Hodosh said. The organizer of a local Segway club, Hodosh said he has seen more Segway riders around Boston in recent months. Last month, he attracted about a dozen riders to a club cruise around the city and he said he continues to preach the Segway gospel -- a mix of environmentalism and free-spirited fun -- to friends and neighbors.
"The Segway -- let me make this clear -- is not a scooter; it is not like any other mode of transportation," Hodosh said. "I like it for the ability to be outside, to easily get from one place to another without the hassles of traffic, and I don't have to worry about parking tickets or road rage." He asserts that the Segway is safe and said that he has never collided with a pedestrian.
Legislators on the verge of banning Segways from the sidewalks disagree.
Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, a Cambridge Democrat pushing the bill, said that Segways and pedestrians cannot coexist on sidewalks without inevitable injuries and crashes.
"We have sidewalks, the standard width of which is not much wider than a Segway," Barrios said. "So if there's a Segway coming in one direction, it doesn't leave room for a pedestrian coming in the other direction. More to the point is the principle that this is a motorized vehicle capable of going as fast as 15 miles per hour, and it has no place on the sidewalk."
Barrios said he had heard anecdotal testimony about walkers besieged by Segways, but he had no data on sidewalk injuries or crashes. He suggested that may be because Segways are relatively new. The burden, Barrios said, rests on Segway executives to prove that the devices can be operated safely on the sidewalk.
He said they failed to meet that challenge over a year and a half of deliberations at the State House.
"The corporate lobbyists for the Segway corporation were unable to provide any safety information about Segways being used safely on sidewalks," he said.
Matt Dailida, Segway's director of government relations, disagreeed. Segways, capable of zipping up to 12.5 miles per hour, yet nimble enough to stop quickly in traffic, have amassed a near-perfect driving record, Dailida said.
Some riders complain about tipping over on Segways when they're first learning, but the company says they are easy to operate.
"There hasn't been an incident with the Segway injuring another person that we know of," Dailida said. Six-thousand Segways have been sold nationwide since they were introduced in 2002, at prices ranging from $4,000 to $5,300. The devices have not found a relatively hot market in Massachusetts, beset by cold weather and craggy sidewalks, Dailida said, and sales nationwide have not met expectations.
Yet the Segway has found a niche in Arizona, California, and Florida, who find them convenient and fun, Dailida said. Chicago, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., have also enacted local ordinances permitting Segways on their sidewalks, he said, and while 46 states have passed laws allowing communities to set restrictions on Segway use, only one major city, San Francisco, has banned them from the sidewalks, he said.
