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.
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.