Segway makers lobby for sidewalk rights

This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 6/16/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

By Scott Kirsner, 6/16/2003

What has two motors, two wheels, and a pair of handlebars -- but isn't a vehicle? It's the $5,000 Segway Human Transporter, and Massachusetts legislators on the Joint Committee on Public Safety are trying to determine whether the sophisticated machine belongs on the state's sidewalks.

The intense national lobbying effort launched by Segway LLC of New Hampshire has been every bit as impressive as the technology that goes into the self-balancing, battery-powered, 12.5 mile-per-hour scooter.

Already, 36 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws allowing Segways on their sidewalks. In four other states, bills have been passed and are awaiting signature on the governor's desk. In New England, there's now pro-Segway legislation everywhere except for Massachusetts and Connecticut.

In the ''dissenter'' category is San Francisco, which banned Segways on the city's precipitous pathways last year, even after the state of California gave the go-ahead.

Segway's lobbyists have been careful not to have their product labeled as a vehicle, which would relegate it to the road -- and could also mean that Segway drivers would have to be licensed, and Segways registered and taxed like cars. So they've coined a new term: the Electric Personal Assistive Mobility Device, or EPAMD. What's an EPAMD? The Segway, and nothing else.

Here's the quick briefing on what's happening in Massachusetts: Segway has presented at two hearings of the Legislature's Committee on Public Safety, most recently in mid-May. Segway argues that its product can have a positive impact on cities, reducing the number of cars parked and driven in the urban center.

''The average speed of a car in the 10 largest US cities is 8.5 miles per hour, but [cars] account for almost 5,000 pedestrian deaths per year,'' Matt Dailida, Segway's director of government affairs, told the committee last month. Before joining Segway in 2001, Dailida was the chief of staff for state Representative Fran Marini, a former House minority leader.

The current draft of the EPAMD legislation says that if a sidewalk was congested, a Segway driver would be limited to eight miles per hour. Segway drivers would have to toot a horn or ring a bell when passing. They wouldn't be allowed to carry packages or, presumably, use cellphones while rolling along. No one under 16 would be allowed to operate a Segway. Any city or town within the Commonwealth would be allowed to make its own rules, as San Francisco did, banning or further restricting the use of Segways.

Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, is a man who likes to make his own rules.

A story: When Kamen first started amassing a fortune as an inventor of medical devices, he decided, on a lark, to purchase a small island in Long Island Sound called North Dumpling. On the three-acre island, there was a lighthouse and a residence. Kamen wrote his own constitution, declared himself Lord Dumpling, and started printing his own currency. All bills had the value of pi.

But the state of New York, which had jurisdiction over North Dumpling, started hassling Kamen about a windmill he'd built to generate electricity for the house. So Kamen seceded from the United States and declared a territorial limit of 200 inches around the island of North Dumpling. The windmill stayed. (This story is one of many entertaining tales of Kamen bucking the establishment, told in the new book ''Code Name Ginger: The Story Behind Segway and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World.'')

Before Kamen and the Segway team unveiled the much-ballyhooed device, they took a Segway to Washington. First they convinced the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the Segway wasn't a vehicle. Then they got the Consumer Products Safety Commission to agree that the Segway was more like a consumer product, like a bike or skateboard. Next up was convincing all 50 states to create what Dailida calls ''a regulatory framework around the Segway'' that would allow buyers of the pricey device to operate it just about anywhere they wanted, including sidewalks.

Segway's slick lobbying strategy was in evidence last summer, at a public safety committee hearing at the State House. After Segway and its proponents had presented their testimony, the Segway crew began offering demo rides in the hallway outside the hearing room. That left the Segway opponents talking to a mostly empty room.

''While we were giving our testimony, all the TV cameras and some of the print reporters left to get test drives,'' says Ken Krause, the operations manager for WalkBoston, a pedestrian advocacy group.

(Not every Segway demo has gone flawlessly, as evidenced last week by photos of President Bush nearly taking a header when he tried to mount a Segway that wasn't turned on. The device simply pitched forward and landed flat on the ground. Bush was unhurt, but the same can't be said of Segway's PR efforts.)

Senator Jarrett Barrios, who co-chairs the public safety committee, says that ''sidewalks were created with the invention of the automobile, because people could no longer walk in the streets. The Segway is a motorized vehicle invading the realm of the pedestrian.'' (Barrios doesn't seem to have adopted Segway's EPAMD terminology.)

Barrios says that Segway wants ''to have it both ways. They say they recommend helmets, but don't want that as a requirement. They want people to [get special training from Segway], but don't want us to require a driver's license, or insurance. But if you resell your Segway to someone else, that person doesn't necessarily have to go in for training. Their corporate presentation is too cute by half.''

He acknowledges that the Segway is a ''more environmentally friendly vehicle for the 21st century'' (there's that ''v'' word again), but Barrios also worries about what happens when Segways moving at eight or 12 miles per hour collide with pedestrians on a sidewalk.

Dailida says that in the year and a half that Segways have been in use, ''our company has not been contacted by a user or a public safety agency letting us know that our product has been involved in an accident with another pedestrian.''

My first question: Are there a large number of Segways out there today?

Dailida: ''Absolutely not.''

My second question: Do you know what would happen if a Segway driver ran into a pedestrian?

Dailida: ''If I came running into you at eight miles per hour . . . you're probably going to get pushed down, and probably will fall to the cement. It's not my impact with you that will hurt you. It's the impact with the ground that will cause injury.''

Here are my biases: I often bike around town in good weather, always using the road or bike lanes, where available. As a pedestrian, I'm a regular user of the sidewalks of downtown Boston.

While I'm a fan of the Segway as a technology, I'm not eager to share already crowded sidewalks with a vehicle/EPAMD that travels more than three times the speed of the average walker. I'd have preferred that Segway dedicate its energies and lobbying resources to expanding the availability of bike lanes, where Segways and cyclists -- who travel at comparable speeds -- can coexist.

I also worry that, even though the current law is narrowly worded to allow only Segways on sidewalks, its passage could make it easier in the future for all sorts of other motorized conveyances, from electric skateboards and scooters to nuclear-powered RollerBlades, to stake a claim to our sidewalks.

What happens next? The committee could decide it wants to study the legislation further. It could refer it to another committee. Or it could report out the legislation favorably or unfavorably, giving the Segway either a green or red light.

Barrios says he welcomes your thoughts, at jbarrios@senate.state.ma.us.

I do, too -- so CC me.Scott Kirsner is a contributing editor at Fast Company. He can be reached at kirsner@att.net