Aside: if anyone's trying to talk someone they care about out of purchasing something like this, I suggest tricking them into getting a skateboard first. I think that would ground most people in reality. Fuck around enough at low speed in less-than-lethal environments, you'll get onto a first-name basis with Newtonian Physics, and it'll clarify, on a viscerally intuitive level, what these types of machines are really about.
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!
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.
During my brief stint with longboarding, I found that tumbling (as taught in gymnastics, martial arts, parkour, etc) is quite useful for a high speed unplanned dismount. That would be applicable here too. However, my stint with longboarding was brief because less than 100% of crashes led to a successful tumble.
Heck, just try skiing or snow boarding. I could never get over my fear of Newtonian motion, even with soft powder to make falling less dangerous, there were always just too many trees around.
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.
> It's just completely not-an-option to fail on such a device at cruising speed.
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.
Think how many times a toddler entertains the carpet with his face whilst learning to walk and run - years of training is involved in us walking normally.
You need similar training to learn these other devices which can operate VERY unexpectedly compared to normal balancing.
Had an electric longboard and loved it. I did normal long boarding for a short time but found the electric variant much much safer because I could break much better than “slowly grind foot on the ground”
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
I got a Boosted board and basically bought all protective gear and did laps around a school find all about said physics before using it as a daily last-mile transport. Helmets are so important.
> 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
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.
> You can't fall onto your arms either, because your inertial speed is faster than your autonomous reflexes.
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.
>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.
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.
I have emails talking with Future Motion support as early as 2017 when my Onewheel+ was nosediving randomly at medium/low speeds (ie. Idling back and forth at a red light).
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
I have a Onewheel XR. Mine took a nosedive at pretty low speeds and I broke my arm. Onewheel blamed me, I had a lot of experience on the XR and a lot of time skateboards and skates. The device problems, I’m happy they are acknowledging that. I don’t like that it is a voluntary recall. I don’t want store credit, I don’t trust Future Motion or their products.
Every middle aged former skateboarder turned bartender or liquor sales person I know who's gotten on one of these fuckers cracked their face open. You have been warned.
To be a rare positive voice, I own their newest model, the Onewheel GT, and I absolutely love it. It feels like snowboarding around town. I've put hundreds of miles on it without a single issue.
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.
To add a perspective I haven’t seen yet in this thread, I’ve been riding one of these for 6 years and it’s basically my favorite way to get around.
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.
This is just my personal opinion, but as a both a programmer and a cyclist, and as someone who saw the OneWheels all over SF --
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.
---
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
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.
We can write safety-critical software. Look at NASA’s CMM level 5 processes for some of their flight control 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.
> This reminds me of those viral videos of indoor cyclists that were going around >10 years ago
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.
I saw a dad with his son together on one (or a similar product) last week. I doubt that they test things like that thoroughly.
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...
The "skin in the game" point is interesting. Imagine if there was a way to buy personal injury insurance for a device such as the Onewheel. Then the insurer has an incentive to audit the code and check for safety hazards, in order to figure out what premium to charge. If you're a customer and you want to know which device is the safest, check to see which has the cheapest insurance.
The problem is that it takes time. Learning how to go on 2 wheels isn't that hard
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".
All true, but you have to trust the organization(s) that manufactured your bike. And unless you’re paying $Ks of dollars the manufacturing quality is sadly going down.
My main point is: You gotta trust someone. If you trust no one you should move out to a remote uninhabited forest.
I remember seeing ads for the one wheel the first time, and thinking it must be some kind of joke. Surely no one would have the nads to sell that in the USA? How are they not going to be steamrolled by the liability lawsuits?
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.
Mine is rotting in my garage. I couldn't sell it or give it away given what I know about 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've never trusted the design of that thing -- not even to get on it once. It's just so.. dumb. It doesn't have a failsafe mode. At least put some small wheels / rollers on the leading edge so when it inevitably nosedives, it wouldn't dig in. Terrible design.
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.
A few years ago, I used to see a middle-aged guy riding one of these every single day from his office to his apartment in Downtown LA. Then I suddenly stopped seeing him.
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.
I used to use an electric skateboard in the 2010s - very early on in the e mobility movement. Though I knew (and still know) how to skateboard I found it to be pretty dangerous due to the speeds you’re now capable of. Unlike long boarding where you’re forced to learn to slide in order to stop anyone can go 20mph+ and get themselves killed.
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.
I looked at the skateboards, the onewheel, scooters. I discounted the skateboards and the scooters because i know that small diameter wheels suck. A little gravel and you could be fucked. The onewheel was still interesting, I hit up the subreddit, tons of people talking about how they got hurt mixed with people telling them how dumb they were.. That was enough for me, I bought an ebike instead.
I broke my pelvis and elbow while learning to ride a OneWheel+. I overcame the motor’s resistance when attempting to accelerate from a low speed and went flying off the front. Recovery was rough, but not the end of the world.
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.
There is another safety related recall going on right now - this time in the world of cycling. Shimano (the biggest parts manufacturer) is recalling more than 2 million cranks (and it's likely they will recall even more in the future). It seems companies are seriously afraid of US agencies in this area.
I bought one, thought I mastered it, ended up in the ER, sold it. Onewheels require a full face helmet and pads. Even under ideal conditions, the device can fail of function different than expected causing the rider harm. I was riding mine off a 2-3 inch curb, which was on a familiar path I took daily, when the nose slammed and I flew off fracturing my rest. The sensation of a OW is amazing at low and high speeds, but the risk isn't worth the reward.
Not that I wish anyone hurt, I do wonder if there isn't some abandonment of common sense - moving things result in accidents, there's no way to prevent that, and if you don't want to get hurt don't use them. For example, I was cycling through a large park this evening, empty because the weather was gloomy and it was a Saturday evening. Cars, cyclists, walkers and joggers use the road through the park but only myself and one other cyclist were on the long straight heading towards each other. When he was about 20 meters in front of me he suddenly fell into the grass on the side of the road. No potholes, no animals, no gust of wind, no broken parts, ... just over he went. A lapse of concentration? No idea. He climbed back on and continued. Point being that even with perfect conditions people still manage to come a cropper.
It seems that the problem is that the Onewheel is a fundamentally flawed design that should perhaps not even be legal to sell.
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.
I sold my Onewheel because I was seeing more reports of this sort of stuff. Personally never experienced it in about 2.5k miles ridden. I guess I was lucky. The way I've seen people take drops on these things, or modify the electronics can't be good. I've honestly wondered if those little front wheels (called Fangs I think) would become a standard thing.
[+] [-] perihelions|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] parentheses|2 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] wlesieutre|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] klyrs|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nh2|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rsync|2 years ago|reply
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 …
[+] [-] nebula8804|2 years ago|reply
While the physics of what happened make sense, it still looks so unreal.
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bombcar|2 years ago|reply
You need similar training to learn these other devices which can operate VERY unexpectedly compared to normal balancing.
[+] [-] artdigital|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] rmbyrro|2 years ago|reply
- 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.
[+] [-] epiccoleman|2 years ago|reply
I think no further comment in necessary here. I was in awe.
[+] [-] green-salt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepsun|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shkkmo|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Dwewlyo|2 years ago|reply
At that point I would stop explaining the obvious to people.
[+] [-] entropyneur|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tim333|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] heresie-dabord|2 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] KRAKRISMOTT|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|2 years ago|reply
Hmm... what about "you'll look like a complete doofus?"
[+] [-] scrose|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] willk|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] migf|2 years ago|reply
I just looked at one and it stole all my hyphens.
[+] [-] exo-pla-net|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rytill|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] chubot|2 years ago|reply
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.
---
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.
[+] [-] flatline|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tromp|2 years ago|reply
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.
[1] https://www.douyin.com/video/7281815910430657846
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYuRlFjwql4
[+] [-] andrelaszlo|2 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] eschulz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xDEAFBEAD|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilyt|2 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] xixixao|2 years ago|reply
My main point is: You gotta trust someone. If you trust no one you should move out to a remote uninhabited forest.
[+] [-] h2odragon|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] furyofantares|2 years ago|reply
$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.
[+] [-] btbuildem|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gamblor956|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] endisneigh|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sleepybrett|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clolege|2 years ago|reply
Mechanical brakes are nice.
[+] [-] alex_young|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bluecalm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fumar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biggc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdaniel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archsurface|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devit|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] MivLives|2 years ago|reply