Be careful out there if you combine speed + unprotected mode of transportation
Yes, I won the court case .. but my <insert grievous bodily wound> won't grow back.
That still leaves the problem of judgement-proof defenders.
Second: We've seen the effect of bodycams on cops. They aren't exactly helping folks prosecute bad cops if they are even on and working and unobstructed. If we can't do it with cops, we probably aren't going to do real well with the general public.
There are other ways to help folks - Things like robust universal (taxpayer funded) health care and paid time off work for sickness and injury that doesn't take weeks to get. This takes the burden off an accident victims and doesn't punish folks on the wrong side of an actual accident nor make lifelong debt for someone using non-car, non-bus transportation.
Someone in that crowd will literally kill someone at some point. They'd better hope I'm not on the jury at their reckless homicide trial.
While we're on the topic, street corners or not, the warning should extend to all sidewalk riding. Driveways and pedestrian gates don't usually have enough clearance around them that you would be able to see what's coming. (At least in the US where sidewalks aren't typically set up with a dedicated bike lane)
What's the point of anon334455 commenting except to warn others to be careful?
How did they “fail” when you plowed right into them?
Having that experience, I don't understand how people seriously treat longboards (or similar modes that heavily depend on the riders ability to balance well) as a serious option in traffic. Bikes? Yes. E-Scooters? Probably yes. Longboards or Onewheels? Hell no.
For a fun observation, go to your local Harley Davidson and watch people that haven't ridden a bicycle in 20 plus years try and learn how to ride a motorcycle, with the expectation that they'll be ready to take their licensing test in 2 days. And many of them won't even bother with that...or they'll take the test on a scooter instead of a motorcycle with gears.
The test is not hard either. Nothing like what our European counterparts have to go through.
Bikes should not be forced to drive in traffic anyways.
> Especially with the advent of divvy or whatever your local equivalent is.
We’ve had bike sharing like this for years at this point and it works like a charm. In fact, it’s offered by the local transportation agencies. I haven’t noticed any differences between bike sharing users and others in terms of cycling ability.
> The test is not hard either. Nothing like what our European counterparts have to go through.
I got my motorcycle license last year. When I started to take riding lessons it was the first time that I sat in a motorcycle, it took me about 5 months to get my license (here in Germany). I don’t understand how a few hours of dedicated training is seen as sufficient for safe traffic participation in the U.S.
Riding is a constant balance of scanning the pavement for inconsistencies and making corrections to mitigate them. I don't know if that's even possible at 20+ mph.
Putting random noobs on electric longboards is a recipe for road rash and broken bones. A few years ago, three people in my office got Boosted boards, and I believe we saw two instances of pretty bad road rash and a broken bone among them.
The few times I’ve spilled going faster than I could run have been ugly! Feet just couldn’t keep up and gone into a barely controlled roll.
I don’t know if I could ever feel comfortable consistently riding that fast
One time was caused by my dog chasing another dog while I was holding the leash standing on my board, that was hilariously painful
Meaning the danger of pebbles is also much different.
i've powered a regular street deck with hard poly wheels, what you said is by no means any kind of guarantee. Lots of hacked together monstrosities out there.
A lot of it is also the different, more forward leaning, stance you assume on an eboard.
As a ski instructor, you could instantly tell from their first fall the kids who would get it and stick with it from the ones who would be sitting in the lodge pouting after an hour.
Mind elaborating what it is you see?
A lot of people just fall. Like a sack of potatoes. Their inner ear senses a point of no return, and they just let gravity take over from there.
Other people sense the fall, and react, but they are still just trying to stop the fall from happening, so they break their wrists on impact.
But usually anyone with any kind of athletic experience or decent kinematic awareness understands that the fall is happening and the point is to direct it. The elbows tuck, the neck lowers, and they guard the body while directing the inevitable fall.
Judo and parkour both actively teach falling and body-awareness. Gymnastics does, though it’s not generally as formal/explicit - you just get the body awareness from beginner-level tumbling.
Anyone who grew up in the skatepark/terrain park knows the experience of learning new tricks and progression. It's thousands of falls building up the muscle memory to land the trick. Over time, it just sticks (or you hurt yourself bad enough you quit).
Cant really do this when you're old. It just takes less to cause damage, unless you're in excellent shape from doing active and dynamic movements over years of work.
Now to try and be helpful - Martial arts, wrestling and doing low weight dynamic movement exercises will help you train. Also, if you want your whole body to be sore, pick up a skateboard, strap as many pads as possible, and go learn how to ride a bowl at your local skatepark. Guaranteed you'll get lots of fall practice :)
Judo and skiing taught me how to fall. It's easier if you start young because you have less distance to fall.
That said, broken collar-bones (along with separated shoulders) are one of the most common serious cycling injury. I’m one of the very few of my friends who hasn’t broken one. And several friends have broken or separated each shoulder multiple times.
I’ve mildly separated both shoulders a few times over the years. Thankfully no major separations or breaks - just some MRIs and PT (plus a few concussions). I did break my forearm when I was 5 - fell jumping a fence, reached out, and snap. Classic broken arm.
I used to ride a racing bike to work and had to slam the brakes on suddenly once when an idiot in a car suddenly turned in front of me. I went over the handlebars, but instinctively did a forward somersault/roll and was pretty much unhurt except a slight graze. It happened so fast that I have no idea how I did it. In the air I must have recognized that my body was spinning and I just tucked into it until I was the right way up again.
So I think the answer is just practice. Do silly shit until you learn how to land it. A foam pit makes it less painful. :-)
When I started long boarding at ~38, I practiced throwing myself into a roll first from a crouch, then standing, then standing on the board - onto grass of course. It helped a lot when I did inevitably have unplanned falls on the pavement.
As a martial arts instructor, here's my advice: The first month or so of aikido classes is a great way to learn rolling. Start on your knees, on a padded floor, arc your arms/"hold a ball", & practice rolling diagonally (eg right shoulder to left hip, etc)
1. Keep arms in a curve: the arms pattern your fall, rather that 'push the ground' 2. Point your nose into your armpit. Don't let your head touch the ground 3. Protect your clavicles. Super easy to break, especially if you hit the ground with a stiff arm. Clavicles take MUCH longer the heal than wrists, & hurt worse too 4. DON'T learn rolling from gymnastics, if your goal is to survive crashes on concrete. Gymnasts practice on thick padded floors & don't mind that their head touches the floor. Bad idea when there's no padded floor.
That said, I think the electric unicycles are much more dangerous. But at least they make it clear that it's not a toy. I passed on the Onewheel because of the random ejection complains I've seen online (which is likely fueling this regulation as it's been known for several years now). While wrecking was not fun, at least I did it to myself. I'd be really upset if I felt like the board did it to me.
I would have thought the larger wheel on an EUC made it more stable and the higher power makes it not have to nosedive. I kind of prefer e-bikes because they are well… normal.
When the one-wheeler loses power it just nosedives, the front hits the ground and they halt immediately.
I wonder if they could save some of the danger by placing small, unpowered wheels in the front and back so when they dip they can at least keep moving.
The rider will always be ahead of his/her center gravity when the board starts decelerating unexpectedly, and it's irrelevant whether it's the front digging in, or the thing just decelerating when approaching low battery.
If the e-bike dies you’re just on a bike, if the single wheel dies you’re on an uncontrollable unbalanceable wheel
They are more stable unless something catastrophic happens (power cuts out), and if worst comes to worst you fall down in a more "natural" posture, like a running man would. Falling sideways from a bike or scooter is way worse.
As a former skateboarder in my teens I tried longboarding just for the fun of it later in life (around my 30s) and this is exactly why I stopped. Given time enough you will eat pavement, it's just a matter of when and how.
I decided to stop when I took a fall from a gap between concrete slabs that wasn't visible, I remembered to roll but still mangled my knee and somehow my thumbs and was out of commission on a 2 weeks recovery. It fucking sucked, the pain was much longer lasting than when I was a teen, the lost mobility made me unable to work for more than a week. I have responsibilities now, I can't be taking weeks off work due to a stupid fall from something that was supposed to be fun.
The electric unicycles always scared me though and I never tried them. I've seen 2 accidents happening in front of me when I was biking and both were really gnarly, even for my standards with action sports. Calling an ambulance for a stranger passed out after they lost control going over 25km/h and hit a parked car was really not fun.
Not really. They seem that way because they require skill to ride, but people hurt themselves on electric scooters much more frequently. (People judge "danger" based on how hard something seems to pilot, not on objective measures of failure. Tiny slippery wheels and points of failure in the frame make the electric scooter a much more dangerous vehicle by default.)
I also think the initial difficulty of unicycles acts as a good filter so that people with subpar abilities simply don’t try. The rentable scooters are dangerous because people that shouldn’t be on them have a false sense of ability because it seems easy. Until they get to speed or take their eye off the road or something.
In the last couple of years they've been wholesale adopted by techies who treat them like toys. The consequences are inevitable.
Also the OneWheel, at least the Pint, can only go up to 15mph, and only on perfect conditions on the most aggressive settings.
(1) I had several weeks under my belt before my last incident and still ate asphalt because the cutout in the sidewalk I was going down as a little steeper than I had thought. The board was angled down just a smidge too far because of this, caught a lip where the asphalt met the sidewalk, and "physics took control".
EDIT: Addendum: That isn't to say parent comment is wrong about other boards/etc, or that the CPSC is wrong.
Does the wheel actually freewheel if the power cuts? I've not played with one (yet), but with the reports of them dipping forward, I was curious if the wheel/motor actually locked up.
the weight distribution doesn't change, but your body had much more control over the distribution.
Steering with your backfoot takes some getting used to if you've never board sported before. I've not snowboarded but I've been told it's like that?
Also skid plates are a life saver. You're going to have to do a drag stop at some point, might as well do it on a something easily removable.
That and the lack of helmets.
I ride mine as safely as I can, and have 5000 kilometres done so far. I’ve had to drop the scooter and bail a couple of times, but mine maxes at out at 25km/h for good reason. Faster than that on tiny wheels is a horrible idea.
It's fun as fuck, and maybe you can die so you should wear a helmet but preventing people from playing with death is bullshittery.
So I got a non-electric bike, because I'm too lazy to walk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
I wasn't brave enough to turn the speed maximum up beyond the regular setting.
He was ok bc he had a full armor suit on, coming from a motorcycle background you gotta respect the speed.
Looks like a ton of fun thou and suppppper cyberpunk :)
According to the callback this is a technical problem, and not of unskilled users.
Novices to action sports often throw their arms out to catch themselves when they bail instead of rolling through the fall. They also don't know how to navigate obstacles via strategic weighting and unweighting of their implement.
The energies involved are also substantial -- to put it bluntly, some of these things fuckin' rip, which is super fun, but also makes safety gear a good idea. You can take a lot of trauma and abrasion bailing at 25mph+, potentially life-changing or fatal in the worst cases. There's a reason why downhill longboarders and an increasing number of electric wheel riders wear a fullface and leathers.