Not to dampen anyones' enthusiam, but here's a little Segway blurb I came across from the 'Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ)' on ESPN.com:
Segway: the SUV of the Sidewalk
Amazon.com has exclusive marketing rights to the first production run of the Segway rolling metal broomstick. For a nonrefundable deposit of $495, Amazon will grant you a place in line to spend $4,950 on a Segway; preposterously, if you write an essay on why you love Segways, Amazon might deliver one by Christmas. Requiring customers to write an essay for permission to spend $4,950! Of course, colleges require customers to write an essay for permission to spend $125,000.
TMQ, who recently inspected a Segway in Aspen, Colo. -- I waved as Nan departed on her ultra-glamorous itinerary -- predicts these devices will be a, what's the word, oh yeah, fiasco. Why? They will become the SUVs of the sidewalk.
Everyone who walks will intensely hate Segways. The manufacturer has already persuaded 32 states to certify these monstrosities for use on sidewalks; without that permission, no one would buy one. But the Segway is 200 pounds of metal with a 200-pound rider atop moving 12 mph, velocity of someone who runs track in the 100-meter event. This means a pedestrian struck by a Segway will be hit by 400 pounds moving at sprinter speed. Being struck by a Segway roaring down the sidewalk will be significantly worse than being popped by an NFL linebacker at maximum warp. The things will simply be dangerous.
Segways are also likely to be driven in a selfish manner. They will clog downtown sidewalks, depriving space to regular pedestrians; and sidewalks in downtown New York, Boston and, especially, London are already so crowded you practically have to walk at the curb. People atop Segways will feel that, as the SUVs of the sidewalk, everyone else should jump out of their way. Riders will barrel along on these monstrosities, terrorizing pedestrians, injuring people without accountability, expecting women and children to lunge aside. One of the few quasi-civilized experiences left in big-city downtowns -- walking along, enjoying the day, checking out babes/hunks and looking in shop windows -- could become a nerve-wracking exasperation.
Probably the Segway will be a bust, considering the thing is expensive and hopelessly impractical: where do you put it when you're not riding it? Are you going to carry a 200-pound object in the elevator up to the office with you? Alternatively, Segway's manufacturer may be driven out of business once liability suits begin rolling. Segways are going to cause harm when used as intended, which is a formula to warm the tort lawyer's heart.
But if somehow Segways do catch on, their main effect on society will be to make strolling so unpleasant and risky that people who presently use the subway (TMQ, for example) will resort to driving in order to be off the sidewalks and safe from Segways. Which means the enviro-green marketing of this contraption is a total fiction. Discouraging people from walking in order to get them to ride a dangerous $5,000 hulk of metal that consumes energy! How very Earth-friendly.
!!!
:animwink: 
