Segways

Is the Segway finally on the right track?                                                                                                          But what happened to the revolution in individual transport that the Segway promised?

 

Since the appearance of the "personal Segway" eight years ago in the United States, this question has been as unavoidable in any conversation about the future as that of knowing when Americans will give up their football to take an interest in "soccer. As Quebecers call it.

 

A revolution announced

 

The Segway may have had its swansong in June 2008 when the price of fuel exceeded one dollar per liter in the United States. Segway sales then jumped 25% from the previous June (a figure to make Detroit green with envy) and the company then recorded, according to the Wall Street Journal , the turnover on highest in its history. Knowing, however, that, according to the same newspaper, that only 23,500 copies had been sold in all in September 2006, that is to say only a fraction of what even General Motors manages to sell in a month, it is advisable to reduce this figure to its fair proportions - especially since the price of gasoline has since dropped considerably.

 

The number of copies sold is all the more derisory as the inventor of the Segway (and CEO of Segway Inc.), Dean Kamen proclaimed in 2001: “the impact of the Segway on the 21st century would only be equaled that of Henry Ford on the beginning of the 20th century. The Segway will change our lives, our cities and our way of thinking. ”

 

An image problem

 

Despite these bombastic statements, or rather because of them, the Segway has an image problem. The American satirical newspaper, The Onion ridiculed these rantings in a virulent sketch, entitled " Do You Remember Life Before the Segway? "(Do you remember how we lived before the Segway?), In which one of the interviewees said:" It is as if something insignificant has happened and nothing has happened " In an interview with the New York TimesAmerican essayist and journalist Thomas Frank said the Segway reminded him of the aberrations of the "new economy." As if blue collar workers were forced to behave like adults ”and white collar workers could“ behave like superior, imaginative and disinterested beings ”. The Segway has recently paid the price for the little humor present in the prodigious turnip (and for this very reason at the top of the entries) Paul Blart: Mall Cop ( Paul Blart: Super Vigile ) in which the scenes of Kevin James on ( or falling from) his Segway are made to make people laugh. (About people falling off their Segways(Segway Hoverboard), doesn't that remind you of the famous George W log?)

 

The Segway advertisements themselves seem made to attract sarcasm. "The instant you step on it" explains an advertisement: "five microscopic gyroscopes and two accelerometers analyze the roughness of the ground and the position of your body at the rate of 100 times per second - faster than your brain". It's true, our poor old brain that took millions of years of evolution to unconsciously develop its faculties of "proprioception" and "equilibrioception" to allow us to move on the rutted sidewalks of our cities - suddenly became obsolete. Segway riders speak of their “gliding” feeling as if their two wheels cannot lower down to contact the ground.

 

Part of the problem with the Segway is that no matter what its technological prowess, it only ever meets a need that is already satisfied. It does nothing compared to the simple bicycle - the invention of which dates back to the 19th century - except the absence of physical exercise (and it is always possible to equip a bicycle with an electric motor). Dean Kamen says his goal is not to create a Wall-E- type pedestrian-free world . As New Atlantis noted: "The Segway was designed for trips too long to be done on foot and too short to take your car". Reducing the shockingly high number of car trips of less than one kilometer that cost a liter of gasoline to buy a liter of milk is certainly a noble cause, but again, it is enough to buy online to achieve the same result. .