The first thought that comes to my mind looking at this device is "these are failure-is-not-an-option situations". There's many ways to fall off a skateboard without dying, and to me it's viscerally obvious, absolutely none of them will ever apply here. You can't recover onto your feet, because these lithium-battery things are like 300% faster than your top sprinting speed. You can't fall onto your arms either, because your inertial speed is faster than your autonomous reflexes. (You learn all about your autonomous reflexes). It's just your face, and skull. This is the first thought that comes to mind: there's no way to bail, 0% chance. It's just completely not-an-option to fail on such a device at cruising speed. And I'm grounded enough to realize, I'm not a person who never fails physical feats. That's not what a human is.
I built my own electric longboard with enough power to throttle my hefty frame up to 25mph. It was perfectly tuned for me. I swapped out so many parts to get it just right. In the first hours of riding it, I took a fall that had me out of commission for a week. I was going 10mph!
Once I got the hang of things, I used the board to commute daily for a few months - putting ~ 8 miles on it daily. To this day, I consider daily rides on this board to be the single highest life threatening risk I have taken to date. I realize that now.
For anyone looking to use a board or one wheel or e-unicycle, please reconsider.
All it takes is one missed sign, one pothole, one inattentive driver, one loose bushing, one nail on the road, one patch of oil. You get the idea. The number and variety of risks and significance of the damage they could do should be enough to avoid.
With electric boards (not the one wheel) you need to constantly manage your center of gravity. This means if you want to break because of a hazard, you MUST shift your center of mass to lean in the direction of travel while slowing down. It takes some time to naturally manage throttle/brake in unison with your center of mass. After 3 months of daily rides, it still required intentional planning. Just let that sink in... All it takes is one "oh shit" moment where you miss the transfer of center of mass. You face plant and possibly slide directly under the path of the hazard you braked for.
If you still want to, get kevlar gear like motorcyclists use. Many have shoulder, elbow and back pad inserts. ALWAYS be padded and helmeted!
I loved riding that thing, it felt like flying. It was addictive. I rode it like wings, my instincts were so good it felt like I was one with it—it no longer required any intentional planning. Sure, I had my share of spills, but learned from each one where I'd messed up and how to become exceptionally careful, and was fortunate that I recovered from each in a few days.
I say all this because, like you, I now realize it was the single most life-threatening risk I've ever taken in my life. These things you write are 100% true:
> All it takes is one missed sign, one pothole, one inattentive driver, one loose bushing, one nail on the road, one patch of oil. You get the idea. The number and variety of risks and significance of the damage they could do should be enough to avoid.
> All it takes is one "oh shit" moment where you miss the transfer of center of mass. You face plant and possibly slide directly under the path of the hazard you braked for.
You are extremely exposed, and trusting your life to firmware developers.
99.99% of the time it is the unbelievable feeling of flying, slicing through the wind.
0.01% of the time it is slamming your body into rough pavement at 20mph, like diving face-first off a two-story building, no warning. No way to see it coming.
My EUC now sits in my shed, gathering dust.
At some point during the descent, the board started to shimmy violently, forcing me to jump off... but I was already going faster than I could run. But run I did, and my feet and legs literally fell behind my torso... upon which I fell and skidded down the asphalt, shirtless. I did manage to keep my chin up and off the pavement as I slid, however.
It was night-time and we were at the beach with some relatives. I gritted my way through playing in waves and showing my relatives around. Nobody noticed anything. When we got home and I walked into the light, my mom gawked at the shredded skin on my chest and, being a woman of considerable decorum, did NOT shout "WTF!!!" But that was definitely the nature of the response.
My helmet was trashed and definitely saved my life. I’m wondering whether extra padding would have saved me from weeks of pain, a surgery and months of immobilisation followed by months of rehab.
The thought of blasting down the road on a One wheel in T-shirt and jeans gives me chills now.
Couldn’t say if that was a power loss issue or the wheel just got too deep in the mud, but doesn’t look fun especially if you imagine that fall on to concrete.
I’ve had this same thing happen on a electric skateboard at about this speed but on asphalt. Shoulder dislocated, elbow broke, wrist sprain so severe I had to relearn how to use my hand. And I was a skateboarder my whole life leading up to that so I knew how to take a fall.
I still use electric bike and fat tire scooter/bike. But the high speed even on that feels sketchy. All it takes is a little gravel or something and you’ll lose your front wheel and eat it hard. That actually happened to a friend growing up, we were flying down a steep hill (ok maybe 20mph) on our BMX bikes. He hit gravel and the front wheel slid out. He had to have his upper lip stitched back on.
"The deaths came as a result of head trauma, with at least three of the accidents happening with the rider in a helmet."
You might not be able fully "run it out" given the speed, but every step you take when bailing is a good thing and rolling out after you take a few steps will help as well.
At the end of the day, it's obviously going to be more dangerous than a bike or a scooter, though. My issues with future motion is more to do with their extremely poor response to design flaws, though.
I think that riding at more reasonable speeds and riding with focus and awareness is still reasonable, but the faults we've seen add hidden risks that are difficult to address as a rider.
I liked the article because its opening page was a full A4 x-ray image of the editor's broken arm.
A small version can be seen on: https://www.heise.de/news/Explosionsgefahr-US-Rueckruf-einer...
I will be indefinitely grateful for his sacrifice to protect my health.
You’re telling me people were buying and using these without knowing how to skateboard first?
I thought every single person I saw using these were, at the very least, passable skateboarders …
All are different in terms of most of the skills needed to do any of them.
The One Wheel is much more like a snowboarding in soft powder than it is like skateboarding, but even then, it's not quite the same. There's a sort of softish center pivot feeling, where on a snowboard it depends on where your edges are.
Skill wise, you don't need any to make the One Wheel do what's advertised. You do need skill to ride it confidently, but you gain those skills as you use it.
I've had one very bad fall on the One Wheel, and it was bad. It slide out while going fast down a steep slippery/sandy hill, and then nosedived, which sent me cart wheeling, then whipped my heel into the ground, shattering it into 23 pieces. I was in bed for 6 months, and didn't walk without help for 12.
I actually think my other boarding skills made the injury worse. I reacted as if the board was a skateboard, where a sideways slide is something I'm super comfortable with and do on purpose. That reaction was to lean deep, counter to the forces of the slide. The big fat gripping tire of the One Wheel bit in, then acted as a fulcrum with my body as the lever, and I just went sailing.
The advice from the GP to have One Wheel-curious people try a skateboard first is indeed good advice. It won't teach you how to ride a One Wheel, but it will teach you how hard the ground is.
I don't care if they kill themselves but they're risking other people's safety more.
I skateboard when I was younger and generally feel comfortable enough on any board where I can stand sideways. No way in hell I wanted to try these though, the top speed alone masks me way too nervous even with experience skateboarding, surfing, and wake boarding.
My take on the safety bit is I would never ride the one-wheel at the top speed the device supports, and would never ride without a helmet or on a road with traffic. It can and will dump you. I've had the battery-out dump (when I knowingly experimented after its low power warnings). Basically if you go faster than you can run out/step and roll out from you're inviting yourself trouble.
While the physics of what happened make sense, it still looks so unreal.
Roller blades and ice skating are similar before you learn braking. I used to get Aron d on my rollerblades a lot, in a time before helmets were more common.
You just sort of bounce down the slope, and it hardly even scuffs up your snow gear.
Wipe out at a quick on a skateboard - the pavement has no give, and you're not all bundled up because it's summer. You're getting road rash, minimum, maybe some more serious damage to bones, head, etc.
Rollerblades, not quite as bad. They aren't constantly trying to run away from you. Similar failure mode though.
I recently flew off a normal bicycle because someone spilled oil or something in the middle of a roundabout. The helmet has a large dent, broke my arm.
I'd need full motorcycle gear before I try a monowheel/Onewheel/etc.
You need similar training to learn these other devices which can operate VERY unexpectedly compared to normal balancing.
When I ride my bike I'm always hopping up curbs at speed, doing quick whip skids/ted shreds etc, not just because it's fun, but because those are the skills you need to stay alive in abnormal situations. It's honestly kind of baffling to me that most people don't actively work on expanding their safety envelope.
You can get good at crashing, and at avoiding crashes, and when you do you can either do the same things safer, or do more fun things with the same level of safety. This is why Alex Honnold isn't dead (yet).
Had one crash, fractured my hand, used it for a while at very low speeds to get around my neighborhood, then sold it
Still very very fun and may get another one for my neighborhood at some point, but one crash makes you realize that, yes, you are in fact not invincible
- Full face helmet
- Knee and elbow pads
- Wrist protection with a sliding material on the palm of the hands
Ideally, you would also wear a body armor.
Neck brace is also desirable, but will not be required in most crashes (if you're not doing radical maneuvers).
But if you do happen to get in a crash where a neck brace would be required, it can be the difference between walking again or never.
I think no further comment in necessary here. I was in awe.
False. I can totally run out of my OneWheel Pint, did it multiple times.
It's max declared speed is 14mph, but it really goes around 12.
This is completely false. Bailing off these things at a variety of speeds is absolutely a skill you can learn. Some bails can be ran put, some are better handled with a roll or a controlled slid on your gear. Higher speeds always carry higher risks in a fall, but "cruising speed" is an individual choice and can easily be one of that you have the skills to safely bail at.
There are always risks, like in any extreme sport, but those risks can be managed with the combination of skills, equipment and good judgement.
I do highly recommend that people who want to buy a device like this take the time to learn the risks and not rush themselves to ride at high speeds before they build their skills and understand their equipment.
At that point I would stop explaining the obvious to people.
I don't understand this. Your initial spped along y axis is zero. Falling from a skateboard should be no different from falling from a standing position in terms of the time it takes for your head to hit the ground.
As someone who's not a skateboarder but has fallen off various skis, snowboard, cycles, motorcycles etc you can fall off a fast moving thing without dying.
The usual is to kind of flop down taking the force of the fall from standing in a king of rolling motion of to your legs then arse. The main issues are you will slide along which can grate skin if you are not wearing strong clothes, and you may hit your head on something hence crash helmets. The stuff worn by motorcycle racers is probably ideal but maybe an overkill if you are going 20mph rather than 100. Fatalities are normally hitting a hard solid object at speed like a tree or similar.
Friendly amendment. Some references:
https://trevinolaw.com/most-dangerous-consumer-products-of-2...
https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/25_most_dangerous_products_i...
Hmm... what about "you'll look like a complete doofus?"
I could never get them to acknowledge it was a defect. I put over 2,000 miles on the board, so I was no stranger to how it should ride. All of my close calls came from it just suddenly powering down on me and are why I lost enough trust in the board to get rid of it.
If not for that defect, it would have been the best tool for commuting in the city. It could ride off curbs, over torn up roads, through grass, and best of all, I could actually bring it inside any building without needing to go through a freight elevator
Bikes are definitely on the big end, being things that not everyone can carry, and that definitely can't just be strapped onto your back. (But they do let you carry cargo.)
It's not as compact as your device, but it gets quite small when folded for storage, and there's a configuration where you fold it down except for the handlebars and can push it around like a little cart.
Get a good pair of padded gloves though. The small, high pressure tires are a punishing ride over shitty pavement. I.e., the kind that's found everywhere in Boston.
Except for that part where you're going faster than the fastest sprinter, with a high center of gravity. Even with a helmet, and no explicit defect, these things are inherently extremely dangerous by their very design.
It’s unfortunate that so many people fail to recognize the inherent danger and choose to blame the device instead of their abilities.
Anyone who can’t control their balance on the fulcrum of a kart tire — under their own muscle power — trying to go fast on one of these boards is outright reckless.
I only meant that it would have been the best commuting tool for me.
I suspect a lot of the fear of open source is driven by the uncertainty of how big the "easier" in this sentence is.
On the competitors side, what if it's currently taking up 90% of your competitor's time just to understand what you're doing and make a rough not-quite-as-good imitation, whereas if it was open source that time drops to 5% leaving them much more scope to improve on top?
Plus, there's fear about security too. Sure nobody should rely on security by obscurity, but that doesn't mean it can't be a helpful thing and what if hackers spend more time reviewing the code you release than friendly bug finders do? I personally have no idea if there's any data on whether OSS has better, the same, or worse track record on average for being hacked, or if there've been studies on how often hacks happen with or without source code being available, etc. but regardless of the actual odds, it feels like the business equivalent of leaving your house's front door open 24/7, so it can be an emotional argument as much as anything.
And like you said, the current default expectation is closed source as default, so the decision makers find safety in making the choice that feels less risky unless they can be sure it will bring big enough positives to be worth it.
That assumes that the problem is buggy code, isn't it? What if it is buggy hardware? What if it is the electronics that is glitching out?
They assume they are shipping bugs and in some cases they are intentionally shipping bugs to make deadlines. It’s scary for a business to decide to make those bugs public even though most of us know the end result is better product quality and higher social capital.
At the same time, I’m doubtful that software bugs in the proprietary code are related to the vast majority of these failures people describe. The only legitimate issues I’ve seen are caused by sensors (either the foot sensor itself, or improper mounting usually related to grip tape) or water damage.
A Onewheel attempts to self balance. To accelerate, you lean the direction you want to go. As your speed increases, the board starts tilting the nose up to signal it’s reaching its limit. Powering the motor requires energy, and self-balancing requires additional energy beyond that, so a safe amount of headroom needs to be reserved to accommodate for variations in terrain and rider movements.
When the noise starts tilting up, there’s nothing to stop the rider from leaning forward more, which also signals to accelerate. This is called “pushing through pushback” and it’s required to go more than ~16-18 mph.
Imagine the extreme case where you quickly lift your rear foot off the board. Obviously it’s going to stop suddenly, and you’ll fly through the air and smash into the ground. Every nosedive is exactly this scenario, just slightly less extreme.
Once I grasped this simple concept it became obvious that every fall was my own fault. This is why I recommend new riders practice balancing with the board powered off. If you can’t easily do that, you have no business pushing through pushback.
The boards being “fixed” by this recall are getting a new feature that makes the board vibrate at high speeds. This is done by modulating the motor, it requires no new transducer. The only “failure” is of the rider being oblivious to the signal the board is sending.
Source: own a V1, Plus, and GT; ridden thousands of miles on my own and other’s boards; ran a meetup and met a huge variety of rider types; once raced in the GoPro Games; crashed hundreds of times including the obligatory bone-breaking incident resulting in surgery
tl;dr: Future Motion is anti-consumer, haptic feedback is overdue, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Onewheel. Every nosedive is ultimately due to rider error.
It's not like a bike or E-Bike.
I have no clue how you look at this and don't think 'death trap's or 'stupid way of dying '
Then again I’ve seen videos of EUCs doing nearly double the top speed of a Onewheel.
It’s all relative to the rider’s ability and willingness to continue stomping the accelerator as it increases in resistance.
I believe they just released a new firmware along with this recall and they have added something new. Might be vibration or sound but I can't remember exactly what.
once you start scaling up 2 wheel scooter wheels to become big enough to comfortably ride anywhere in a city that wasnt explicitly designed for scooter traffic (nyc for example), the weight of the whole scooter starts surpassing even lighter ebikes (60 lb+), without the benefit of lower costs or more transportability (few/none 500W+ scooters can be carried comfortably through a narrower nyc restaurant door)
this one came closest https://inokim.shop/collections/inokim-scooters/products/ino... but after testing it out I couldn't see the upside over a smaller folding ebike
I also have a folding e-bike which has larger and wider wheels than a scooter, which is preferable in my opinion. The problem with scooters and e-bikes, even folding ones, are that a lot of buildings will not let you take them indoors. Or most will have you use a freight elevator, which is operated manually AND has set hours that it’s run.
There’s also the difficulty of storing/locking them if you go out for dinner or some other event. Something as small as a Onewheel that you could pick up and walk with, and is small enough to store under a table, or take on a train without blocking anyone is a dream in this sort of environment.
Edit: I should also note that I’m speaking from my very NYC perspective.
I've been using the Segway mini for years and think it's amazing, it hits all those things you mentioned.
Its only problem is that it's no longer sold, and mine is starting you show its age. My wheels and battery need changing, but I'm not sure if anyone can actually do that anymore.
So I'd really like another option...
Does the one-wheel have that?
From what I remember, the blue power light would be on, but it would take restarting the board for it to engage properly again.
If you sold it or gave it away, did you tell the new owner about this defect?
I also stand by this: The Onewheel was the most versatile commuter option I’ve ever used in NYC.
If failsafes were added that didn’t rely on ‘maintain balance while skidding on your nose or tail at 15+mph in traffic if the power decides to randomly cut off’, I’d likely buy it again.
I just can't trust that any organization will write code well enough to get on one of these things, especially where there is split-second interaction with SF traffic, and where my face being broken is one of the consequences.
(I might trust certain people, but not organizations.)
I don't know if they did anything bad or not, but the very concept seems suspect. I want my body to learn the laws of physics, as on a bike. I don't want my body to have to interact with software that gets updates over time.
You can level similar criticisms at modern planes -- planes worked before software, and people learned over time how to fly them in bad conditions.
They had skin in the game!!! People writing code in a company somewhere aren't personally liable for your face breaking, or the plane going down in flames. I didn't follow very closely, but the recent Toyota/Boeing issues basically seem like typical organizational blame deflection. No skin in the game.
Unlike mechanical systems, this type of software has no end-user/operator repair.
When software is doing too much, then the pilots and operators lose agency.
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So I believe a bicycle (or unicycle) has more agency than a OneWheel. The human is forced to learn it, and it's a STABLE target for learning.
Humans have an intuitive sense of physics, and it can be honed to incredible degrees
This reminds me of those viral videos of indoor cyclists that were going around >10 years ago
https://youtu.be/WB3qTVg3hhs?t=158
It's a perfect example of why you shouldn't underestimate the human's brain ability to learn -- software is not that flexible or reliable; AI is not that flexible or reliable.
I mean think about SLOW the self-driving cars are after 10+ years. Their reaction time and judgement is shit.
I'm not an exceptional cyclist, but I've learned to make decisions safely in 15+ years of riding around SF, through diverse conditions and terrain. It's obvious to me that these capabilities are beyond software.
I’m not as familiar with applications in other domains, but I know they exist. This is typically not fun code to write. It is bureaucratic and developed over decades. It is more an engineering discipline than most commercial software. And, it is organizational, this is not code written by a single individual. I would not trust that at all. More eyes mean more trust, broadly speaking.
The 737 Max issues were not as much about software as corporate cost saving efforts.
I have no idea if the OneWheel software can be fixed. I’m sure there was real talent that went into it. I suspect the first to market and other financial incentives were big factors in this outcome. Just the fact they are only now, apparently, adding user notification of error states is kind of crazy.
So I agree that certain types of organizations are not trustworthy, but I also think the safest code we have ever written was done by…organizations.
I crashed and broke my back on a two wheeled scooter in SF due to a pedestrian walking on a red don’t walk sign, for example.
Plus, none of these companies are doing NASA quality assurance or anything close, so why even compare them to NASA?
But the Onewheel is a harder problem - you must continue to run even if something goes wrong! There are some industrial processes that are run continuous, you must not ever stop that pump or furnace or the molten metal will solidify or sewage will back up into people's homes or things will otherwise go very, very wrong. To deal with that, you need at the very least one-out-of-two function, redundant heterogeneous parallel motor drivers and IMUs in the Onewheel for example. Most plants - even big automotive lines, where an isolated fault can cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour - do not go to that enormous effort and expense. A consumer product never will.
I guess they always thought they didn't need it...
The other day my wife showed me this unbelievable performance of a Chinese acrobat unicycling on top of a big rolling globe while doing acrobatics with balancing bowls on her head [1]. Since that site is Chinese language with weird popups, I also found a 10 years later performance by the same lady on youtube [2], but it's not quite as effortless as the first.
That site is tiktok or rather the Chinese version of it.
It definitely looked like an accident waiting to happen. Both were wearing helmets but they were going pretty fast. I can imagine that smashing your face into the ground will be ugly at those speeds. Especially for a 6-7 year-old with the weight of an adult added on top...
Because they are confident that the cab driver doesn't want to kill HIMSELF. If he behaves recklessly, he'll face consequences
That is, self-driving cars with remote operators are a moral hazard. If they make a mistake, the operator doesn't face any consequences
This is not a trivial point. If you look deeply into causation, you'll see it in many places
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Likewise, Tesla's policies of forcing your hands on the wheel are incoherent. They claim to drive you around, except that it's your fault if something goes wrong. Well, that's exactly where I wanted the help.
Definitely check out "Skin in the Game" by Taleb if you haven't
I predict that this will become a recognized limitation of AI. In 10 or 20 years, we'll realize that it was a philosophically incoherent position to claim that a machine is doing something, WITHOUT being liable for the consequences of performing poorly.
And not just incoherent, but bad engineering. Without this vital feedback, it won't operate well, and it won't learn. In evolution, which is the process that has produced machines capable of navigating the world (us), death is a very strong piece of feedback!
Set some minimum standards for the products and require a bond or insurance for them to be sold.
We already set standards for other vehicles and safety critical products (FAA, FMVSS, UL listing, etc). The minimum standards makes a case for culpability through negligence relatively easy.
Requiring a bond or insurance means either betting a substantial amount of your own resources on the fact that you have done correctly, or convincing an insurance company (who are demonstrably passable at assessing risk based on their still being in business) to assess the likelihood of payouts and price your premiums accordingly. If you can’t convince them you made this safe, you won’t be able to afford to put it on the market.
Then instead of expecting somehow that OneWheel is going to cooperate with audits they have no real incentive to participate in, consumers in aggregate to make informed, rational decisions, and a bunch of other things that are unlikely to happen… (The insurance company is just going to base rates on aggregate historical data like they do with cars. Some of you may need to die so we can determine whether the products are safe. Best of luck.) People can just go buy products at the store and be relatively confident that they’re not going to kill them.
I’d wager that markets are generally healthier when people have confidence that generally available products aren’t dangerous. I can only imagine how little I’d purchase if instead of electrical standards and UL listing I had to go talk to my home insurer every time I wanted to plug something else into the wall so I could find out if it was going to kill my family.
Learning how to go on one is noticeably harder as in need 2 axis of balancing, not (essentially) one
Meanwhile they want to sell product that's small and convenient enough to carry, and one wheel gives it advantage in that. And artificial balancing is easiest way to add it.
> I mean think about SLOW the self-driving cars are after 10+ years. Their reaction time and judgement is shit.
> I'm not an exceptional cyclist, but I've learned to make decisions safely in 15+ years of riding around SF, through diverse conditions and terrain. It's obvious to me that these capabilities are beyond software.
This thing is not self-driving. There is MASSIVE gulf between "make a vehicle controllable by human" and "make that vehicle self drive".
My main point is: You gotta trust someone. If you trust no one you should move out to a remote uninhabited forest.
I also addressed the difference in the comment -- this type of software has no end-user / operator repair, and the costs of failure are great.
I know how a bike works, and I can repair it. (Time-tested materials like steel frames are also nice.)
I don't know how the OneWheel works. In theory, I might be able to read some of the source code, but that counts for very little. It's certainly more complex than a bike. It also hasn't been tested over a long period of time.
Well it looks like we've had a test... I haven't touched a OneWheel since I first saw them 5 years ago, and now it seems like I have some good info about them.
The test of time works!
You can't see source code of onewheel, or take out the firmware and run it in isolation.
Software producing companies have the privileges of being protected from inspection, but responsibility of a guy assembling Ikea furniture.
Nope, especially if you’re paying $Ks of dollars the manufacturing quality is sadly going down.
I ride an electric skateboard (boosted stealth) -- it makes sense to me. If the battery runs out, or if it loses connection to the remote, it turns into a dumb, heavy skateboard. When it fails mechanically (snapped belts, burned out motors), it turns into a dumb skateboard. You can carve to lose speed, you can drag your foot to slow down, you can even slide it like a regular longboard.
Even with all that, I sometimes imagine what could happen if the software glitched and cranked the throttle 100% forward or back - makes my skin crawl. Luckily I've never heard of that happening with any of their boards in however many years.
All that said, I think these types of "last mile" small-scale mobility devices are a very good way to help people decouple from cars, make transit more accessible, and generally take back street space from the monoculture of heavy, dangerous, energy-intensive vehicles.
This has happened to cars too.
> take back street space from the monoculture of heavy, dangerous, energy-intensive vehicles.
This is crucial I think, we need to be able to get from A to B free from a risk of getting flattened by a 40 ton truck
It's the stance of the rider (leaning forward) combined with the sudden lack of acceleration from the motor which disrupts the equilibrium of forces and causes the ensemble to tip forward -- then it all comes to an abrupt stop because the leading edge digs into the ground.
As we know, once hoverboards got really popular the cheap ones (perhaps most?) were NOT built that way. I saw someone nearly faceplant when theirs ran out of battery and stopped on a dime.
It's not particularly usable as a scooter without the battery.
A Segway needs electricity to balance itself, so my guess is that when it gets close to running out of battery, it stops by itself and refuses to continue.
The one wheel in a sense is worse because inherently there’s no way to use it without electricity and people overestimate their ability to travel on high speeds on it.
That’s why I ended up going with e-bikes and escooters. I think the nature of the motion lends itself to be inherently safer.
Ebikes are both fun and practical, but I don't know where I'd store one during the work day; the skateboard can just come up the elevator with me.
Mechanical brakes are nice.
This sentence doesn't make sense to me:
> Unlike long boarding where you’re forced to learn to slide in order to stop anyone can go 20mph+ and get themselves killed.
I agree that electric longboarding is dangerous for beginners who never learned to longboard, but I don't see why that argument doesn't apply to scooters or bikes. Anyone can go 20mph+ on an escooter or ebike too, and it's harder to bail. Moreover, beginner longboarders often go faster than is safe down hills, since they're not practiced at controlling speed and stopping. For the disciplined rider, regardless of skill, electric longboards are safer since it's so much easier to control speed down hill.
Nitpick: sliding is a pretty rare way to stop on a longboard.
Sliding is rare, true. But at high speeds is the only way to stop. At low speeds I do agree, but the issue is that footbraking requires balance, and even people decent at long boarding can lose control while footbraking.
My main argument against longboard is that there’s no way to stop at high speeds and that steering inherently requires shifting your weight in a way that makes you vulnerable.
This is not to say that no one should longboard, but personally I only do so on flat terrain now.
To explain for anyone unaware, I primarily footbrake to stop on my longboard - you put one foot out and hold it against the ground and the friction slows you down.
Ironically, the most ridiculous and most common way to hurt yourself on a scooter is to bail instead of continuing to ride the perfectly good scooter. You can find hundreds of videos on YouTube of people who upon seeing an obstacle just confidently step off the scooter (still going 15 mph) and eat dirt 0.5 seconds later instead of using the brake and safely stopping almost immediately (these usually brake just fine).
There's more chance of bailing if you're on an undersized bike (bmx style) or maybe on a step through design rather than a straight top tube. But I still don't know where you'd apply that; maybe at a skate park, but not on a road and I don't think on a trail either.
I raced ski team in high school and have done a lot of risk sports stuff. But I had seen enough videos and read enough stories before I bought the board. So I was padded up at knees, elbows and helmet when it happened.
I still took a major blow to the shoulder that I had to get X-rays for and sustained surface injuries that still bears scars. I also have an ankle injury from a run-off save prior from a nose dive prior to that fall.
I decided then that I was selling the board because I had too much important stuff that summer to look forward to, and that I was not likely to get to enjoy it if I kept using that product.
Like others in this thread, I contacted the company about the nosedive, explaining my injury and concern that the product could not be ridden safely. I asked if they would please consider taking the product back.
They ignored my injury, and information provided about the fall. Instead they made a point it highlight the high resale value of the product and that I should do that.
The company has a class action suit in some status of pending. I have read more than enough about this company’s behavior since to be watching and waiting for what seems inevitable. I am expecting my own exchange may make it into discovery.
A full year after the CSPC told them they had problems YEARS after their customers had been telling them they had problems.
Feels like they had to do something, so they essentially did nothing enough to call it something.
> For early adopters, however, owners can receive a “pro-rated credit of $100 to the purchase of a new board,” according to Mudd. The credit will only be issued after owners confirm that they have disposed of the old model.
For safety, I wear motorcycle armor and wrist guards with it, and I keep my maximum speed at ~15mph. Injuries are almost always caused by people not wearing simple safety equipment and trying to go way too fast.
I'd never recommend an adrenaline-adjacent activity, since I don't want it on my conscience if a person gets hurt. But Onewheeling might be my favorite part of the day: it's like having a cabin on the slopes of Colorado, where you're able to step out the front door and immediately have the experience of snowboarding.
So, I won't recommend it per se, but it's as fun as advertised, and you'll know it if you need it.
Does that include a helmet?
Besides this recall, here are all the other issues with their boards: 1) BMS discharge protection shutting off board instead of pushback/buzzer. 2) Wires breaking in cable harness leading to BMS communication drop shutting off board during mid ride (my friends have broken bones on the XR because of this). 3) Pint X Balance cable pinching 4) GT motor connector coming loose during midride leading to board cut off. 5) Lack of locktite in controller box screws and nuts (common for power button nut to come loose and short controller in Pint) 6) Lack of proper waterproofing in controller and battery box (should put silicone sealant around connector ports internally and externally) 7) Water getting into Pint motor connector causing short (should put dielectric grease on all connectors) 8) Underspeced charging connector on Pint PCB for hypercharger leading to arcing and damage. 9) Unknown reproducible GT shutoff over certain bridges on later hardware revisions. My theory is that you swapped out IMU because of chip shortage and didn't validate high pass filters properly. Either that or GT motor connector looseness issue. I can go ride one of my friends GT and make it shutoff right now if I wanted to by riding over certain bridges! It's insane! 10) Underspeced mosfets on controller leading to lack of torque and recovery in nosedive situations. My VESC Pint beats the GT on hill climbs. 11) GT axel weakness leading to breakage. 12) Powder coating on GT rails leading to overheating 13) Lack of proper coolant (like statoraid) in GT Hypercore hub leading to overheating. 14) Reverse polarity on XT-60 connections (this is just evil)
The above design flaws have lead to multiple injuries and broken bones in Future Motion devices that I have mitigated in all of my VESC boards I have built for myself and the people I love and don't want to see get hurt.
OneWheels are great devices. I myself have close to 10K miles on them. I have felt infinitely safer after I started converting my own to VESC boards, removing the discharge path on the BMS (so it couldn't power off the board unexpectedly) and disabling moving faults (so it couldn't drop the user due to a failed footpad). This has been achieved by swapping out both the BMS and ESC to open source, aftermarket solutions.
I live in the middle of the abyss where there is no traffic (or people), but instead rolling fields for miles and miles. If I fall, then I'm falling into dirt and grass.
People ride these things around cities? That's literally crazy! Don't you guys know that cars were invented to keep you safe inside when you crash at 20MPH!?!? Let alone 75MPH. This device has no business being a commuter vehicle in crowded spaces. Bicycles and motorcycles are acceptable because they have big wheels which provide stability via the gyroscopic effect.
That being said, please post links related to freeing the boards of binary blobs: I need a new rural outdoor pastime, and with all this negative press, there's bound to be plenty of vectors on eBay and craigslist soon....this looks super fun.
If you ask me, this is a great device but adapted by the wrong audience. This is supposed to be out there with the off-road, back country BMX and dirt bike crowd -- imagine downhill off-road long boarding.
You know, the crowd who would mock that anybody ever died on one of these going 19MPH, until enlightened they probably cracked their head open on a cement curb.
I suspect this is part of why do many boards ate being bricked by the update.
yeah that's pretty scummy.
I think there's a useful discussion to be had about the reasoning behind things like this. This is definitely going to be a bit of a devil's advocate thing but it brings up a much needed discussion.
One of the often cited reasons for limiting third party access to firmware and repair is that unauthorized repair could potentially compromise the safety, security or reliability of the device (or at least void the certification), and the manufacturer would still have its brand on the product and the user would not blame the third party if something broke, but rather the manufacturer. This was supposedly behind the reasons why Tesla doesn't like repair, because they really didn't want news about battery fires.
Obviously, in this particular case the safety characteristics of the original product, as you note, are terrible to begin with, so any competent third party is more likely to increase the safety than not.
But say, for example, that the OneWheel was designed with a proper engineering process. Say, for example, the ESC and powertrain was held to ASIL-D standards and the battery pack was UL 2271 [the standard for light electric vehicles batteries] certified - both are entirely reasonable standards to expect this equipment to be certified to (ASIL-D is a common standard for things like Power Steering modules in cars, which have to be robust because any failure could result in full lock to lock torque overpowering the driver at highway speed - also a system involving servo control and brushless motors.)
Such a system would involve a very significant design and verification effort to catch edge cases. Things like your wires breaking scenario would need to be analyzed as part of the design - can the design fail in a safe way when certain failures are encountered, up to and including redundancy. Things like waterproofing, as you mention, need to be tested to IP rating standards - probably at the very least IP66 for the whole device given where people use these devices.
> swapped out IMU because of chip shortage and didn't validate high pass filters properly
This wouldn't have been allowed in a certified product. When you change materials or components in a certified product, you have to redo the validation and certification process. Otherwise the certification is worthless.
*Now, given these conditions, would allowing third parties to easily replace components with random ones potentially compromise safety?*
> removing the discharge path on the BMS (so it couldn't power off the board unexpectedly)
This one, for example, IMO, is questionable. I would argue that it does reduce safety, and given the original DRM, this is what they are trying to prevent. Clearly, some level of certification was achieved for the original battery pack (UN38.3, mandatory to transport), and they don't want this modification to happen.
Given the rising dangers of battery fires and explosions, I believe that BMS system integrity has never been more important, as these devices have a MUCH greater risk exposure (24/7 potentially) and to a much greater population (anyone living in a building with at least one of these devices in it). Even big players like the Tesla Megapack have fire problems, and that's with a proper safety management design. Let's say, for example, a MLCC on your ESC fails, cascading into an arc fault involving the PCB, carbonizing and fusing the copper layers together (there are examples of this happening on even lower power designs). Without a discharge path, the battery and the device will now need to convert 1 kWh of power into heat over about 5 minutes. This is going to set the carpet on fire.
Under UL 2271, and actually under all of the UL standards for batteries if I remember correctly, you need to pass all of the safety tests for the battery with one set of safety devices not otherwise certified (i.e. mosfets as opposed to UL rated battery fuses) "faulted", which means that commercial batteries like the Segway Ninebot scooter batteries are usually fitted with multiple layers of MOSFETs and cell protection ICs. Of course in this particular situation, you don't want the battery to cut off too quickly. And thus, this would call for specific and deliberate engineering to design a solution that will protect against both sudden failure and fire.
Looking to the broader system, the VESC system proposed as a replacement for the original controller is likely more robust in actual usage, but I don't personally think it's a direct alternative to a properly designed first party solution. VESC hardware is largely a DIY-grade prototype hardware and software, which, while functional, I don't consider (and they explicitly claim) is not safety critical. I kind of did wish for a while that they would actually attempt to build such a system, because it would have been nice to have an open source solution with a safety-grade lockstep microcontroller, redundant power paths and whatnot, etc, but after spending some time in that community it seems that the thrill of danger is part of their idea of fun, so I'm not holding my breath waiting.
This brings me to I suppose what my actual point is.
I think that in some cases, software locks that attempt to prevent the unsafe modification of certified and safety critical systems are acceptable. I think that instead of disabling functionality, the app should just pop up a warning that the system has been modified. This is what Google does with bootloader unlocking and what Apple does with their "important display/battery/camera message" notifications, or what Samsung does with Knox. I'm not opposed to these types of schemes because the lifespan of a $2000+ device is likely to be very long, and it's important for downstream users to be aware of the modifications that have been done, and for the manufacturer to be able to say "hey, this is modified, the certification is void, it's your problem now" when it inevitably turns into an accident.
I do, on the other hand, believe that it is valuable to allow users to prototype and develop on hardware they own. This is why I propose that the software locks do not disable functionality entirely. I also think that by replacing all, or a significant amount of the internal components of your device, it is no longer a OneWheel, it is your own creation, and as such, the manufacturer should not, and (tbh already cannot) restrict what you do with it. I'm okay with the manufacturer requiring that its trademarks and the certification marks be removed as well.
I think that a robust framework where manufacturers can prove that they are doing what is necessary to make these devices safe is extremely important especially as this is an emerging market. We are already seeing anti-PEV regulation in various markets, with these devices being technically illegal where I'm from, and NYC banning some PEV batteries (?). If these transportation devices are to become popular and accepted and eventually legalized, something has to be done, both from the DIY side (to promote actual and demonstrable safety) and from the manufacturer side (to certify their products and deliver products with a track record of safety). Otherwise, I think eventually the burden on these devices will eventually push them out of the market.
I just looked at one and it stole all my hyphens.
When my son was born (about 10 years later) I had a brief crisis of self and thought “you know what would make me feel like myself again? Skating.”
Took me about a month but proceeded to snap my wrist, made it hard to change diapers for a few weeks so it was uh… decided in our household that I’d finally let it go for good.
Thought about getting a OneWheel but to your exact point, am 99% sure user and/or mechanical error would cause me to crack my head open. After reading about this recall, I’m definitely not ever getting one.
Thanks LLM!
https://bike.shimano.com/en-US/information/customer-services...
For quick reference the affected model numbers are DURA-ACE and ULTEGRA branded cranksets with the following model numbers: ULTEGRA FC-6800, FC-R8000 and DURA-ACE FC-9000, FC-R9100 and FC-R9100-P.
Basically the issue is that the only control available is turning the wheel, but an unstable scooter actually needs two controls: one to balance the board and one to control the speed.
Having a single control means that they are tied and thus that, discounting air resistance, if the user continuously leans forward, then the board has to continuously accelerate up to arbitrary speeds since turning the wheel to balance also results in acceleration.
Furthermore, it seems that they don't even have a motor powerful enough to always be able to balance the user along with air resistance, so if the rider continuously leans forward eventually the motor is no longer powerful enough, the board loses balance and the rider probably falls down and dies.
Not sure how they could even think of selling a design like that or how they are surviving the lawsuits.
The simplest fix seems to be using four wheels instead of one, which also removes the need of active balancing and is a normal proper design. If "leaning to accelerate" is desired instead of a more normal handle with a throttle control, then it should be achievable by adding suspension springs and detecting their extension.
Not sure if it's possible to have a proper design with one wheel; a thing that comes to mind is having a sort of "landing gear" that can come down and make the board stable on demand. An alternative could perhaps be an internal reaction flywheel, but not sure if that works and is feasible.
(Presumably, enough force on the front edge could cause them to over-tilt, but riding normally, it will forcefully tilt you back and slow down.)
Classic. But that's not enough, you also need airbags and crumple zones. We can't realistically expect everyone to wear motorcycle gear all the time so we need to build it into the mode of transport itself.
Soon enough, you end up building car :)
For me, it has more utility than a bike. I usually go around 15 mph and I’m careful to not nosedive which happens when you go really fast (~20+ on a pint) or accelerate too quickly.
Though, I learned the behavior of the board the hard way. I wouldn’t recommend it to most people even though I love it personally.
I hope Future Motion increases the reliability and safety of the board and keeps refining their product.
Maybe the concept of this product could work, but would you really ever trust this company again? You may have been lucky but you know others were not, and the company kept downplaying the issues with the device.
It took them this long to finally do a voluntary recall of this device, what's going to happen next time something goes wrong?
According to a street vendor who saw the accident, the guy's Onewheel froze up on him riding down Grand Ave from Bunker Hill, he went flying, and he suffered severe brain damage. He's been in a coma since then, and his family's lawsuit against the manufacturer is still working its way through the courts.
Recall just means “fix needed”. It doesn’t necessarily mean they all get returned to manufacturers. (I’d have gone through half a dozen cars if that was the case.)
I love the thrill of going fast on stuff, but I think the One Wheel and similar devices need to be capped to a "safe" speed (where science determines "safe"). If a firmware update came out that did that today, I probably wouldn't even notice, because I don't ever let it get above 10-15mph if I can help it.
EUCs have default warnings at high speeds, but you can disable or change these warnings (making them higher or lower). You also need to monitor your battery health; I wouldn't trust an old battery.
Ultimately the rider determines the risk. I'm the only rider I know that wears a helmet. Many friends or acquaintances have broken their legs badly or been hit by multiple vehicles. I ride slower and safer, generally, but even I've done some minor damage to myself.
I'm inclined to get rid of the EUC in favor of a scooter or ebike. Two points of contact with the ground is so much safer.
My EUC is one of the dinkier ones though, not the high powered fancy ones that cost $2k
What the ever loving fuck is the "error state". Fucking websites and laptops can have "error states"
Vehicles shouldn't have "error states" or they shouldn't exist.
Also if it buzzes when you go too fast people will deliberately attempt to make it buzz.
I warned the next buyer but he still bought it, just like me before crashes.
But I did convince him to join the Onewheel Crash Club Facebook group. For everyone who is interested to know how dangerous this is, check that page out.
Balancing onewheelers - if the control or power system fails, you immediately go down, hard. And since the cruising position is weight shifted forwards, it's 100% nose dive.
That's the only way to make these safe. At 20 miles an hour it's way to easy to lose control
So yea, most of the problems with this board are related to people going faster than they can safely bail.
Maybe that was part of the business plan in the first place, and they're also sponsoring the inevitable class action big lawsuit through another subsidiary company. Buy the victims off with a little money now in return for large shares of the settlements. 15 years from now when the courts decide they're due money for being stupid enough to get on the thing in the first place, the original company will have been long bankrupt, and the State (ie Taxpayers) will be on the hook to relieve the suffering of the poor victims.
Not to mock people injured on these things; but seriously, just look at it. You embraced the risk when you stepped on it.
$100 credit for a new board - no thanks. I'm not giving these assholes another cent and I don't want anything they've touched anyway. Resisting the recall is a full and likely permanent breach of trust.
I still ride the thing. Mostly trail riding; I find the concentration required doesn’t mix well with bumpy streets.
I’ve also had injuries snowboarding and doing other sports.
The recall thing makes sense, but offering $100 to destroy a $1700 toy seems kind of lame.
The fact with these things is, you don't have leverage to stop. On a bike with proper posture, your center of mass is a fair way behind the contact patch of the front wheel and you can brake hard to the point of wheels skidding and not nosedive. Though a front wheel motor hypothetically going from full power to sudden lockup probably would send you over the handlebars.
Someone passed me on an e-scooter with 6" wheels, going at least 40km/h (I was going about 30km/h and the passing speed was significant). Disaster waiting to happen.
For new models, it’s just a software update (~free) and for old models it’s a $100 credit on a new board which probably doesn’t consume all of the profit on a sale of a board.
Plus this coverage is now a ton of free advertising for a product many forgot about or didn’t know about.
Shouldn’t they have just done this years ago? Am I missing something?
If I were were one of these people I'd probably be pissed off. A proper replacement or money back should be the only reasonable response.
At this point there's no way this company would ever have me as a potential customer again after seeing their irresponsible handling of this.
That being said, I literally only see one, and it's the same one, there's a kid who commutes to my kids school every day in a suburban area.
In two years of commuting over two miles to work and back on it every day, I'm proud to say I managed to never have to put my hand on the ground. I had to bail a few times -- broke the drive belt once, and hit a few serious pavement gaps and rocks -- but I never went down.
Phew!
Height of the communal electric scooter rental phase, I thought this would be a great way to get around downtown where I worked. Paid the deposit and couldn’t wait.
As time went on the excitement wore off because it seemed more dangerous when I would see existing riders going around. I eventually cancelled the pre-order.
Here we are years later and three or four people have died. Just like my instinct told me.
You've got to be kidding me. I hope they're hit with a class action forcing them to replace all of the flawed early units or reimburse purchasers at some ammortized rate.
Skateboard: $700. Hospital bill $6000 - it blew past the deductible.
I’m alive but electric scooters are much better since you have big strong handles to hold onto. Even then don’t go at stupid speeds.
Or am I the only person that doesn't understand this new definition of "recall"??
Is this the hardware manufacturer equivalent of "runs fine on my machine"?
Around here, they are like rolling molotov cocktails.
I’m sorry, what?
This is very scant on details
