The idea of mixing people with mechanised transport of any kind is entirely stupid. Ther is no sense in allowing segways on footpaths and they sure as hell can’t mix with cars. The segway may be a nice design but it is also utterly stupid.

So of course I think all the buzz was silly, and I sure as hell won’t be dropping thousands of dollars on one anytime soon, but the backlash is just plain iirational. Most of the stuff I’ve seen have seemed pretty clear that the Segway is definitely much safter than bikes or skateboards as far as pedestrian injuries. There certainly needs to be more exhaustive “crash testing” but on TV, I’ve seen one both run over some one’s foot without any noticable pain and at a moderate speed, run into some one and the collision seemed very minor. Maybe at top speed it might be a different story, but at the price they’re charging for them, and given the pressure I’m sure they knew they’d have, I’d sure be willing to bet that Kamen did an awful lot of testing before they were ready to show it to the world.

Of course it it just seems like the politicians have a lot better things they could be doing that passing laws making something illegal before there’s any indication of a problem. Of course it’s all about knee jerk reactions and trying to make it look like you care about people while squeezing them for every dime you can.