8 ms·
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 thin
by perihelions 3y ago
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.
- green-salt 3y agoI 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.
- gnicholas 3y agoI assume that riding a Boosted requires more skateboarding skill than riding a Onewheel?
- green-salt 3y agoYeah it requires that base skill since its just a longboard with a really good motor/battery controller.
- bombcar 3y agoThink 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.
- imchillyb 3y agoA toddler's tiny mass, along with a rubbery and flexible body, allow them this luxury. An adult's mass quickly runs afoul of the above mentioned physics-gut-check.
- Retric 3y agoThat greatly depends on the surfaces involved and the persons skills. I’ve fallen off the back of a galloping horse before as an overweight 6+ foot guy and been fine, but that frequently causes severe injuries. I doubt a one wheel rider is dealing with significantly more energetic collisions. They are however dealing with the dangers of urban environments.
- donw 3y agoI’m actually curious how the physics works out on this one. Excess body fat is going to act as additional padding, but it’s also additional mass going into the collision equation. I wonder where the sweet spot is?
- vGPU 3y agoI’d wager the primary factor is how you land, whether you hit your head, etc. If you land on your buttocks first it likely wouldn’t be as bad as landing flat on your back and striking your head. Although getting that much shock/compressive force applied to your spinal cord probably isn’t great either.
- drekipus 3y agoReplace body fat with muscle mass and you'll have found the sweet spot. Muscles need to protect and hold everything together to protect them from shock. They also provide more of a barrier. Body fat is just extra weight, it's not going to hold up anything. I'm convinced that Fat is just a tax on the body.
- klyrs 3y agoDuring 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.
- jeffalyanak 3y agoIf you are riding with good posture and awareness it you can run out and roll from a one-wheel. 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.
- thot_experiment 3y agoWait what? I mean I agree about being able to fractionally run it out (I spilled at full speed when i first rode one of these and came out mostly fine because of a decade of skating) but there's no way that these are more dangerous than bikes or scooters. There are way more ways to get tangled/impaled (not usually literally, but more ways to have crash force concentrated in a smaller area) when crashing a bike/scooter.
- avianlyric 3y agoScooter I can kind of see the argument for. But bike not so much. Assuming we’re talking peddle bikes here, then they’re naturally self stabilising, and capable of far heavier breaking than a One Wheel is. A One Wheel requires quite a lot of active balance from the user, a bike requires some balance, but hard cornering on a bike, or slamming the breaks on hard don’t generally result in unplanned dismounts, even with amateur bike riders. A One Wheel on the other hand, even experienced riders will still end up doing unplanned dismounts when performing rapid unexpected manoeuvres (such when avoiding another vehicle or pothole). It’s only anecdata, but I’ve personally never had a serious unplanned dismount on a bike (after thousands of hours), and includes while mountain biking. I’ve have had a couple of nasty unplanned dismounts on a One Wheel just riding around a park. I suspect broader stats (assuming anyone’s even collected them) would probably find that my experiences of each mode of transport is pretty representative.
- Dwewlyo 3y agoI have seen a person zipping from the street to the sidewalk with like 20-30km/h on one of these. At that point I would stop explaining the obvious to people.
- zolbrek 3y agoI had a good laugh with a co-worker a few weeks back when we saw a chick wearing sunglasses with her hands deep in her hoody pockets riding a similar single-wheeled vehicle at an intersection. Looking cool trumps common sense for certain personality types.
- thot_experiment 3y agoThese sort of snide remarks are so closed minded, maybe she spent a lot of time honing her craft. I can probably ride my brakeless track bike in SF traffic with a higher safety margin than most people on a normal road bike. Don't underestimate human skill.
- avianlyric 3y agoI know a handful of people that are absolute zealots when it comes to One Wheel and electric unicycles, riding all kinds of crazy contraptions, and doing so with incredible skill. They all still wear helmets and pads, all it takes is some wet leaves and you’re going to have a really bad day.
- WWLink 3y agoYou sound like the people who explain that they're good drivers while using instagram on a phone because they have a lot of experience driving cars and using phones.
- thot_experiment 3y agoWhich is unfortunate because one of these things has an energy of 1MJ and the other has an energy of 50kJ, claiming some sort of equivalency is totally unrealistic.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> 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.
- aaronmdjones 3y agoMake sure you dispose of that helmet properly. They are not designed to survive crashes and are considered a consumable in such events.
- rsync 3y agoWait wait … wait… 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 …
- wkat4242 3y agoHere in Barcelona these things are super common. The riders seem to be pretty adept. The problem is more that they don't care about pedestrians, they zoom around while on their phones on the pavement where they're not allowed and zip around pedestrians way too fast. I don't care if they kill themselves but they're risking other people's safety more.
- RajT88 3y agoIt's like this in San Francisco too. And Chicago. Heck, I saw a middle aged guy in a forest preserve on the trails with one taking some work conference call.
- dzdt 3y agoI have and ride a onewheel but never skateboarded. It really is a different balance; one-wheeling hasn't helped me a bit for skateboarding skills either. 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.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoI know a few people that bought these to commute around town. I always thought they were bat's hit crazy and did try, unsuccessfully, to talk the out of it. 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.
- 3y ago
- wlesieutre 3y agoVideo of what nosediving off a one wheel looks like courtesy of Adam Savage: https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/1205621915877961729/ https://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/1205621915877961729/ 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.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoAnd you'll notice that he successfully plants his left foot, but momentum just carries him ahead and into the fall and roll. And this is a best case scenario. "The deaths came as a result of head trauma, with at least three of the accidents happening with the rider in a helmet."
- rwc 3y agoWhere are you getting that quote? The article seems to contradict that: "Alongside the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the company now seeks to remedy the products after four known death cases — three without a helmet — between 2019 and 2021."
- albedoa 3y agoI was confused too. The only google result for that quote besides that comment is the following article: https://popculture.com/trending/news/onewheel-self-balancing-skateboards-totally-recalled-after-4-deaths/ https://popculture.com/trending/news/onewheel-self-balancing...
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoThey retroactively changed the article, that's where I got the quote from
- HarryHirsch 3y agoHe hopefully wasn't expecting to stop himself like that, that looks painful, it's asking for a sprain! But what a nice roll, does the fellow practice judo?
- rmbyrro 3y agoThe minimum requirements for such devices is: - 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.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y agoThree of the reported deaths were from head trauma, while wearing a helmet.
- poszlem 3y agoCompare any full face helmet (a motorcycle one for example) with whatever people wear for these (or for bicycles) to know why that would help.
- Zetobal 3y agoWhile wearing a skate helmet I guess the full helmet meant a real integral one.
- rmbyrro 3y agoCertainly a bike helmet. 1. Doesn't do a great job protecting the face or the side of the head; 2. Not designed for motorized vehicles, it can't absorb enough the kind of forces involved in these incidents. You need a full face helmet, designed for motorized vehicles. A motorcycle one is great, but probably an overkill (no pun intended). There are good downhill helmets that can do the job well enough. Fox and Leatt are trustworthy brands. There are other good ones. It should be obvious, but don't trust Chinese brands.
- dharmab 3y ago- Most motorcycle helmets sold in the US are inadequate DOT helmets. ECE 22.05/22.06 helmets are literally 50 years ahead of the DOT standard, but you have to specifically seek one out in the US to get one. - Most people purchase helmets in too large a size. - Many people do not correctly adjust the helmet straps.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoSame thing with electric scooters, they need to have their speed limited to that of a bicycle's and with better safety software and pothole detection.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoI’ve not seen an electric scooter that can go faster than a bicycle so far (at least being sold in Europe).
- doctorpangloss 3y ago> Aside: if anyone's trying to talk someone they care about out of purchasing something like this Hmm... what about "you'll look like a complete doofus?"
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoHeck, 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.
- momirlan 3y agocross-country skiing is not that bad.
- beezle 3y agoRide in the middle of the run to avoid the trees! Falling on hard pack is an excellent way to jolt yourself awake ;) In any event, carving at high speed keeps your body pretty close to the snow.
- outrun86 3y agoWas high speed carving a couple of years ago. Blew a turn and rag dolled. Broke 2 vertebrae in my neck and two in my back. Fractured the back of my skull. Speed + impact can get intense.
- beezle 3y agoOuch! Personally I try to keep speeds to the 40s now. Worst thing I ever did was start using those run tracking apps which conveniently also give you your speed. Got in a competition with a friend on the other coast and was regularly hitting 55+ on runs that a wipe out could easily end in the trees. What stopped me was when a late teen girl did just that and died going at far slower speeds. (sorry the late reply, been away)
- gnicholas 3y agoWhat I like about snowboarding is it feels fast, even when you're going not-that-fast (at least in my case). I once had a friend video me coming down the hill, and when I watched the video, I thought: wow, I thought I was going much faster than that!
- artdigital 3y agoHad 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
- shkkmo 3y ago> 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.
- epiccoleman 3y agoI recently saw a guy in my neighborhood pushing his toddler in a stroller in front of him while riding a One wheel. I think no further comment in necessary here. I was in awe.
- gnicholas 3y agoDefinitely saw this in Atherton the other day.
- deepsun 3y ago> 300% faster 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.
- kaiwen1 3y agoThis. I own two Pint Xs. Ride almost every day for three years. Had two nose dives at full speed and ran both out. I'll never upgrade to a faster model for this reason. You can't run out a nosedive going any faster. Also, the Pint X is just so nimble and fun. To me it's the sweet spot.
- parentheses 3y ago++ hard agreement here. 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!
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoOne day I decided to ride a cheap, narrow, narrow-wheeled skateboard down a fairly steep access road that led to a beach parking lot where I grew up. 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.
- 3y ago
- nebula8804 3y agoA few years ago there was this video floating around of a guy flying off an electric skateboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7lO4yV-eQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7lO4yV-eQk While the physics of what happened make sense, it still looks so unreal.
- nh2 3y agoGerman computer magazine c't reviewed the "Hoverboard" in the past. 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-halben-Million-Hoverboards-3258717.html https://www.heise.de/news/Explosionsgefahr-US-Rueckruf-einer... I will be indefinitely grateful for his sacrifice to protect my health.
- heresie-dabord 3y ago> I'm grounded enough to realize, I'm not a person who never fails physical feats. That's not what a typical consumer is. Friendly amendment. Some references: https://trevinolaw.com/most-dangerous-consumer-products-of-2021-in-the-us/ https://trevinolaw.com/most-dangerous-consumer-products-of-2... https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/25_most_dangerous_products_in.html https://www.al.com/news/2016/02/25_most_dangerous_products_i...
- entropyneur 3y ago> 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.
- igornadj 3y agoPeople who fall from standing by their own volition usually have a sense something is wrong and can fall relatively gracefully. People who are tripped from standing collapse like a sack of bricks. Same thing, you don't see falls coming on these things.
- withinboredom 3y agoYour head and feet are moving at the same speed. Very fast. The board leaves you behind by stopping. You now put one foot on the ground. Because of friction, your foot stops and goes flying behind you before you can put your next foot on the ground or apply any meaningful weight to it. Because your foot was thrown backwards, it applies angular momentum to your body and you begin spinning around your center of mass (aka, falling forward). Less than 100ms has passed at this point. In the best case, your other foot is impacting the ground, right now, directly under you. But it can't take your weight before it has flung behind you and adding to your angular momentum, forcing you to go face first. It is at this point, you are capable of realizing you are going to fall face first. You have ~80ms to realize this, and put your arms up, before impact. Even if you have amazing reflexes, an impulse isn't reaching your muscles in less than 40ms, that means you need to move your arms from 'keeping balance mode' to 'defensive mode' (including applying resistive power to keep them there) in less than another 40ms. It literally isn't happening.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tim333 3y ago>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.