How the 'hoverboards' took off in spite of laws against them | Hacker News Reader

How the 'hoverboards' took off in spite of laws against them

bbc.co.uk

54 pointsnns114 comments

"All of them should be allowed on the pavement, because people aren't stupid, they will get out of the way if they see one coming."

Speaking as someone who sometimes puts his back out and spends a few days hobbling slowly about, I shouldn't have to quickly get out of someone's way if I see them coming and they shouldn't be allowed on pavements.

You shouldn't ever have to move out of someones way if they are not walking. I live in NYC so perhaps my perception is skewed but pedestrians should always have the right of way.

Don't move for runners, bikes (shouldn't on sidewalks unless it's a kid) or these things. It's up to the user to manage themselves and prevent themselves from hitting and potentially hurting others.

I see these around here and there, more and more, and don't mind them for now but if we start to get a problem with users hitting people then I'll support a sidewalk ban on them.

The people who hit pedestrians are assholes. Pedestrians have the ultimate right of way. If they refuse to move, then you have to go slow. Just increase fines for hitting people and the problem will go away. Responsible people shouldn't be impacted by assholes who have to shave that last second from their hipster commute.

Not so common in NYC because that would get you elbowed, but in many places people walk in pairs or larger groups which blocks up traffic.

(EG When I'm biking on campus, sometimes I have to stop down completely because of 8+ students taking the entire sidewalk for them)

Biking is supposed to be done on roads, not sidewalks.

I wish this were the law everywhere. It varies by jurisdiction. "Each city in California has its own rules about riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. Some cities allow sidewalk riding, some don’t. Check with your city’s municipal code." (http://la-bike.org/resources/california-bicycle-laws)

That's quite a generalization.

Assuming you mean where it is an offence to ride on the sidewalk, I'll always choose angry peds or a penalty over getting killed by a coffee-drinking, cell-phone talking urbanite in their range rover. Or non observant lorry driver. Or bus running a red light. Etc.

Cycle a bit in a city and you'll change your view.

Cycling on sidewalks feels safer, but it's actually more dangerous. [1] The problem is that cars don't expect something moving quickly on the sidewalk, and so hit cyclists at driveways and intersections.

[1] http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/riskfactors.htm

There are places that are shared pedestrian/bike paths. The east side of the GG Bridge when the west side is closed for instance. In those cases I think pedestrians should at least be aware of cyclists, instead of walking 4 abreast and blocking the entire way.

Yeah I had a bicycle guy quickly drive over the pedestrian crossing almost riding right in front of me.

I don't own a car and ride almost everywhere. In all the cities I've lived, my experience has been the exact opposite. Since the majority of accidents involve intersections, riding on the sidewalk doesn't do much other than put you in a less visible position, where drivers don't expect you to be and won't be looking for you.

Disagree. I cycle to/from work and to most errands here in Boston. The bike lanes suck in most places, but bikes on sidewalks are bad news.

Don't give me that crap. I can't count the number of times I've been nearly run over by cars who refuse to give me my right of way and try every possible trajectory just so they won't be in any way impacted by a person on a bicycle. The only good part about riding on the road is the satisfaction from hearing the honks of asshole cars. I'm taking my right of way and we're paying with our lives if we have to. Fuck cars.

And before you start saying I'll be endangering pedestrians with the same outlook - no. Pedestrians have the ultimate right of way. If there are 8 walking abreast and don't make way when I ring, then so be it, I'll go at 2kph until it's safe to pass them. I'm not in a hurry.

Not on a campus sidewalk. At least not in my campus.

Then you either take the road for a bit, if it's safe, or ring them politely. It's the same if you're walking fast, which is really all biking is.

There is no road, cars are not allowed at campus after a certain point. only bikes and pedestrians..

Runners are pedestrians, too?

May I suggest you use a hoverboard?

I doubt having your back out is ideal condition for riding a device where you may have to hop a couple of steps to catch your step if you mess up anything.

A bit off topic, but have you tried yoga to help your back problem? I've thrown my back out a couple of times and am in the process of integrating yoga into my daily routine, want to know how well it works (if it works).

Not OP, but while I've had a lot of success, the evidence doesn't support blanket application of 'Yoga' to back pain. The real problem is that back pain typically goes away regardless of treatment modality, which leads to a lot of people who grab the last thing they tried as "the real thing that fixed my back".

yeah, I realize it's not going to cure back pain, I just want it to improve my musculature. I think I keep pulling things because I'm at a computer all day and don't do a lot of movements/stretches.

It's not practical to design everything in the world with the very slowest people in mind. The efficiency losses would be huge. Imagine if every pedestrian crossing light went for five minutes. Vehicular traffic would grind to a standstill.

That said, I see no reason why the people riding these things couldn't just move around other people. I rarely have problems with people on bicycles, because we can mutually avoid each other.

Actually, there was a study in the UK a couple of years ago that didn't get acted on, but which demonstrated that pedestrian crossing lights in British streets allowed so little time for crossing that able-bodied teenagers had to hurry -- middle-aged, elderly, unfit, or handicapped people really need about triple the time.

The solution is probably a combination of the sensor-controlled systems showing up in newer crossings in the UK (IR sensors block traffic by setting a red light until the crossing is clear) and cutting down on automobile use in densely populated areas like urban cores. Ahem. (Hint: why should your one ton rolling steel status symbol trump anybody else's right to use the highway?)

The study was very flawed. The 85 percentile walking speed for pedestrians (1.2 m/s) is for when people start the crossing at the end of green man. So some 15 percent of the people are slower. However if youo take into account most people start crossing before the end of the green man, then the time is ample. "the sensor-controlled systems" - are hopelessly inefficient and actually confusing for pedestrians.

A countdown which displays the time until the red-man is best for a balance of all users.

The green man is intended as a sign that it's safe to _begin_ crossing the road - at least in the UK. You'll notice that the man changes away from Green long before the light sequence. That's intended.

In various places the green man will start to blink when there is seconds left before it changes over.

Doesn't really matter. The takeaway is that the light timings don't have to change. You would just make the man stop being green earlier.

How are you supposed to know how long it has been since the green man appeared? Presumably if it turned green while you were waiting, you would have started walking immediately. Do you have to wait until the next green man if you arrived at the intersection while the light was green?

If you are particularly slow, then yes. This is equivalent to getting at the intersection only a few seconds later, not a big deal.

"The very slowest people" are actually the majority: the elderly, the very young, the temporarily or permanently disabled- if you put all of those people together they're many more than the young, strong and fast.

What's more important, each and everyone of us, will inevitably, at some point in their lives be very young, elderly or disabled. In fact most of us will probably be each of those things during our lifetime.

So it's not so much a matter of efficiency as accepting the fact that human beings are not born with wheels, but with feet and that they should always get priority, despite any misunderstandings about what the purpose of "efficiency" is in the first place.

>"The very slowest people" are actually the majority: the elderly, the very young, the temporarily or permanently disabled

That is quite simply not true. http://www.censusscope.org/us/chart_age.html As you can clearly see, most of the population falls in the age range that has no trouble walking at a reasonable speed. I don't have exact figures on how much of the population is disabled or seriously injured at any given time, but experience says it's not enough to make up for the fact that the very young and the very old are very very far from constituting a majority.

I'll qualify my comment: "the very slowest people" are the majority _in the developed world_ where the median age is 35+ (Wikipedia). It's also where people are the most likely to use hoverboards.

In any case, you can dispute the numbers and it makes no difference. People are not born with wheels. We need space to walk about. By convention and by law, the pavement is not for vehicles.

Despite that, I'm prepared to share the pavement with people on wheels but it has to be absolutely clear that it's not my responsibility to avoid them. It's theirs. They are the ones choosing to put me at risk, they should take full responsibility for it. And watch where the bloody heck they go.

Bicycles aren't allowed on the sidewalk, either.

In the UK they are allowed on some sidewalks (or pavements) and often have their own lanes.

However, on most pavements it is still an offence but 'some' cyclists choose to overlook this point.

How fast do these go compared to a bicycle? I saw a few of them on the street and they didn't seem to be moving faster than a brisk walker.

My impression was that bikes are generally banned because they move fast enough to cause serious injury yet are silent enough that pedestrians don't hear them coming.

I've seen a few of these in London they aren't really faster than a fast walking speed which makes people who use them look very silly.

They are quite often laughably used in shopping centers or and super markets mostly because allot of the pavements in London are horribly uneven which probably doesn't provide a very good surface for those. I've seen 2 guys on those things at Westfield last weekend arguing with a bunch of confused staff that didn't knew how to treat them.

I don't really get this device it doesn't help you to commute any faster, it doesn't increase your pedestrian commute range if you aren't fit to walk you won't be able to use one of those (they got quite a stringy weight limit, and require quite a bit of effort to balance yourself on) anyhow.

It's a bit funny to see fit and young hipsters pretty much using a 500$ mobility scooter...

A quick search resulted in one with a official speed of 8MPH, or about 12-13KMH.

Bicycles may not be allowed on the sidewalk, but you'll still see plenty of them on the sidewalk anywhere there aren't good, separated bike lanes.

No one travelling on a sidewalk should go so fast that they are unable to avoid a stationary object.

Edit: extra word

To be clear, with most of the celebrity adopters, they're often given the device and sometimes paid to use it.

Here in Toronto, I've seen marketing teams of people handing out this device and rolling around Yonge-Dundas square (sometimes cast as times square in feature films) in a guerilla marketing push.

It doesn't mean they're not cool and fun, but the breathless articles about how cool, hip, and trendy people are "suddenly using the device" are often coordinated.

No surprise there, as one of the objections mentions is the "stare" factor. That is, how much do you like to be stared at while doing something.

What's fascinating to me is that now, 14 years after the Segway failed to take over the world and became indelibly associated with upper-middle-class nerds, similar technology is now 90% less expensive, has found a more socially-acceptable form factor, and is actually becoming associated with celebrity tastemakers.

It would be quite the irony if the breathless hype about the Segway circa 2000 ended up being realized a decade and a half later, without the Segway.

A humorous and insightful PG post on Segway: http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html

I've thought about that a lot, and I think new tech adoption relies more on the social framework that's in place around it than we think. Simply put: if it makes you look/seem like an asshole then it's not gonna happen unless it's too good to ignore.

Smart watches and bluetooth headsets are great examples: they work fine but they make you look like a tool because of the social frameworks we have in place (it's rude to check your watch while in a conversation, it makes people feel weird when they think you are talking to them but you are just on your bluetooth.) Smartphones didn't deal with this friction because there's a long history of social rules around reading in public, and smartphones are essentially the same thing. We know when it's rude and when it's not, we know how to handle somebody reading next to us in the train, etc. In short, using a smartphone didn't make you look like a tool, it was just the next logical step from reading a magazine.

I definitely think Segway fell victim to this.

Too early (or poorly executed) happens often enough, that I don't think it's irony -- it's expected. See also: Windows for Pen Computing and the iPad.

The funny thing is all these "hoverboards" are the same exact device from China. You can get them off alibaba for $200 or spend $1,500 for some American branded version that is the same exact thing.

Yeah, I was reading a little about it and it's fascinating. It's a case of the full product development capabilities moving into the actual factory, so no outside company needs to design or own the product. The actual factory stamps it out and the outside company just brands it and sells it retail. And when combined with nonexistent intellectual property protections, in this case, no one even seems to be sure which company or factory originated the design. And no one cares.

The downside is there is no way for the consumer to rely on a trusted brand with good quality. It's a total crapshoot.

> no one even seems to be sure which company or factory originated the design

It's all from the same factory in China.

> brand with good quality.

It's all from the same factory in China.

From what I understand there are differences in the quality of the components, but it's impossible to tell which brand has which set without doing a teardown on it.

Link for the curious?

You can try Alibaba or Aliexpress usually:

http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB...

Tons of reviews on Youtube, a lot of people take them apart and find that modelX is the same as modelY and so on. If they look close to the one she has, it is the most rebranded model. Check out Amazon and search for 2 wheel hoverboard, peoples reviews tell you too.

I believe this was invented by a Washington State-based company, Inventist. They also came up with the Electric Unicycle (EUC).

http://www.inventist.com

Boosted boards are still the best "hoverboard" for my money:

http://boostedboards.com/

The price is prohibitive, but the market now has something like 7 or 8 brands competing, so I expect the price will come down in the next year or so.

In SF it amortizes the cost of Ubering every day in about 3 months. I've run the numbers, it's pretty fascinating.

I happen to have a Yuneec E-Go, but recently there's been some cheaper knock offs appearing.

Honestly I'm not sure what order they came in, but the Magneto electric board has several look a likes that are in the ~$300 range:

- Magneto: http://magnetoelectricskateboard.com/ - Alternatives on Alibaba: http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/electric-skateboard.html

Hmm, off-road boards...

> American rapper Wiz Khalifa claimed on Twitter that he was handcuffed by customs and border patrol officers at LAX airport because he refused to disembark from his transporter.

I don't know whether the officers were justified in ordering him to get off the transporter (I tend to side with civilians), but this is kind of dumb. What was he expecting to happen? I can understand getting arrested intentionally to make a political point, but is this really the political stance he wants to take?

Either he was too dumb to know he was going to get arrested, or he's making a pretty irrelevant political point.

He's a celebrity and this got his name in the news. Isn't that more than enough of a reason?

You're right, I understand his motivation now, and I hate society a little more.

Well, it's not that different from writing blog posts in the hopes that they show up here. Humans are social and connections even asymetric ones are valueable.

My objection is that Wiz Khalifa's bid for attention worked, despite the fact that he had nothing of value to say. I'd hope that if someone wrote something of no value it wouldn't make it onto the front page of HN.

I'm not sure the ban on public use is a bad thing. I imagine they'd become a nuisance if a lot of people were using them. There's quite a difference between someone walking into you and someone crashing into you at 14mph on a 10kg set of wheels. Bicycles are used on bike lanes and on the road for a reason.

>I imagine they'd become a nuisance if a lot of people were using them.

My image of them was already soured by just one guy in an airport a couple weeks ago doing a lazy slalom in front of me while I was trying to get around and to my flight.

Yep exactly.

I saw one pile into the side of a bus stop going flat out. Smashed the glass. That's a nuisance.

I have one of things. Bought off Alibaba for about ~$300 shipped.

It is fun, but you have to be very careful about stepping on. It is one of those things where the more you panic the more something goes wrong as you overcompensate. I fell when I tried to step onto one on concrete and it was way faster than I was use to so I overcompensated for the pressure my foot was causing and landed hard around my tail bone. And by that point I was pretty experienced getting on (just not on concrete).

Snowboarders seem to have a pretty easy time with it. But again, getting on without help is probably the most difficult step.

Let's not call them hoverboards until they actually hover.

I believe the correct term is "swegway".

hmmm, can I call it a smegway?

smugway

Why do people insist on calling these things hoverboards?

It's 2015 Marty McFly would be extremely disappointed.

Completely agree. I don't see any hovering going on. Of course, I'm still on the losing side of the battle against the "sharing economy" phrasing, so I might as well accept this one too.

In London they're called swegways.

https://twitter.com/search?q=swegway

How does these compare with the single-wheel versions?

http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/airwheel-carbon-limited-editi...

I'm guessing, the larger single wheel gives you a smoother ride? They're easier to pick up and carry like a briefcase, too. But I imagine, harder to ride.

They also have a double wheel version that also uses large wheels which seems like a better idea.

http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/q3black340wh/

Don't want to sound like a killjoy but those seem absolutely pointless. If you made one so small it would fit in a sole of a shoe I'd reconsider but in their current form they're just as inconvenient when not in use as a bike and infinitely less useful when riding.

Was going to say it appears that the Segway patent has run out. But then:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9330361/segway-hoverboard-...

I was working on iBot cost reduction stuff back in 1999 when that patent was filed. I was under the impression the company (our customer) had a lot of balancing machines running around at the time and figured the patent must have been a few years old at that point. Guess not.

Well, as long as people are willing to risk life and limb in the pursuit of fun and thrills, I can't really talk down on them.

Also I can't wait to get some more traction in my side project so I can get my "recreational personal flight device" into a prototype and testing stage. Think of it as akin to JetMan, version 2.0, and not needing a helicopter.

Have been riding one of the single wheel versions of this. Incredibly difficult, but fun none the less.

Is there any open source for the control system? It's not rocket science but from what I understand getting a control system running with dynamic feedback is not trivial either? Anyone experience with the theory? Any books/papers you can suggest?

Try starting by looking up "PID loops" (Proportional Integral Derivative).

Are these the real life version of conveyor belt sidewalks the scifi autors wrote about?

Reminds me that a design company was pitching the conversion of the London underground into a network of conveyor belts.

5 lanes, 3 speeds, so that the ones closest to the edges were just about walking speed, while the innermost was somewhere close to a jog (or perhaps even a run).

Take that and multiply the width by a couple of times and you've got Heinlein's rolling roads.

Or Arthur C. Clarke's "moving ways" (Against the Fall of Night / The City And The Stars)

Sounds like Asmiov's "The Strips"

You can see those in airports already?

I actually see these boards in airports as lot as well.

But not on the streets :\

Not yet: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/09/11/nbbj_proposes_...

It's way more conspicuous than those sneakers with the wheels on the bottom and those sneakers really took off in some parts of the US. Did they cause a lot of problems for people?

I don't know, but these hoverboards probably won't be as popular as those sneakers.

Deleted comment

Not everything is about effing obesity. Sometimes fun is just fun.

Seriously, the way people whine and whinge about them, you'd think they never did anything unless it was for some grimly healthy purpose.

"Why do Segways provoke this reaction? The reason you look like a dork riding a Segway is that you look smug. You don't seem to be working hard enough."

http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html

It appears to be much faster. It certainly looks fun to ride.

Skateboards burn much less energy than walking too. I don't see anyone calling them obesity boards. Or calling motorized bikes obesity bikes, etc.

> Skateboards burn much less energy than walking too

Per distance traveled, sure.

But probably not per minute, in typical use.

Why do we have skateboards, bikes, scooters, inline skates...? Fun. Don't be distracted by the "personal transport" jargon.

I've seen people using them for transport (actually, a big wheel unicycle version).

In a place like London that's very walkable, but very large, it makes sense.

Bikes aren't used for transport?

You can't out-exercise a bad diet.

not really true - if you walk 10-12 hours a day, i'm pretty sure you could eat anything you were capable of and not gain weight (assuming that you start in reasonably good shape - if you're already overweight then just walking would put you out of the fat-burning "zone")

According to Mayo Clinic, walking at 3mph burns between 314-469 kcals/hr [1], depending on weight. That's 3140-5628 kcals for 10-12 hours of walking, depending on weight.

Now consider the amount of calories available [2]. I could have the IHOP meal for breakfast, walk for 12 hours (side note: who the heck has time to walk for 12 hours?), not eating anything all day, then eat the Dickie's meal for dinner, and still be well over the kcals burned.

jp555 is right, you can't out-exercise a bad diet - what you eat matters.

[1] http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/weight-loss/in-d...

[2] http://news.health.com/2015/06/03/the-9-highest-calorie-meal...

You eat 5000Kcal+ per day? You need like 1/4 of that...

I didn't say that. If it makes you feel better, mentally replace "I could have" with "One could have" (It's too late for me to edit it)

The fat burning zone (I prefer the term "fat burning bias" because it's not a switch but a gradient) would only begin to dominate as you use up all the energy in the food you eat. Any food you eat (not just carbs!!!) will cause insulin to be released, which "smothers" the fat release signaling (just like you wouldnt dip into savings when you have cash on hand). Only when available food energy diminishes, and therefore insulin diminishes does the catecholamine (epinephrine, etc) signal dominate, driving body-fat release for use as metabolic fuel.

It's more for fun than transport.

I don't think it's meant to be a 100% replacement of walking. Personally I think of it as a toy.

They're faster than walking or skateboards, and also incredibly fun

But then how would celebrities show off their wealth and status? Everyone has feet.

They are actually coming down in price quickly. When I first read about them they cost at least $2000. Saw them in the mall the other day for $500.

I hope that sort of price drops continues to similar devices like the MXB Motocross-boards (motocrossboard.com) I have been looking at them for a while as alternative to driving, as work home and classes are not exactly close together for walking and biking.

Sounds a lot like FUD.

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