SPEAKING OF MANUFACTURED ISSUES:

Scooter Rolls Into a Political Tempest: After San Francisco city supervisors ban Segways from sidewalks, Mayor Brown promises a veto. (Chris O'Connell, December 9, 2002, LA Times)

When inventor Dean Kamen rolled out his much anticipated two-wheeled creation dubbed the Segway Human Transporter late last year, he predicted the device could be the answer to urban ills from pollution to traffic congestion.

The electrically powered vehicle, which resembles a rotary lawnmower, moves at speeds of up to 12.5 mph, and Kamen hoped it would replace the car as the vehicle of choice for short trips of less than five miles.

What Kamen failed to foresee was how some people in San Francisco -- a city known for walkers -- would react to the idea of sharing their sidewalks.

"I don't care if it's gyroscopes or what it is," Jeanne Lynch said of the technology that enables the vehicle to move almost as a seamless extension of the human body. "You just get some clown on their Segway to speed it up and the people on our sidewalks are going to be victims."

Lynch, 73, is a member of Senior Action Network, a group that represents 25,000 seniors in San Francisco and lobbied to keep Segways off the city's sidewalks. Seniors and disabled people in particular, Lynch said, are afraid of being knocked over by the virtually silent vehicle.

Their efforts were successful. On Nov. 25, San Francisco became the first municipality in the nation to impose a ban on the vehicles when city supervisors voted 8 to 2 to keep them off sidewalks, out of public transit stations, and off buses and trains. They are allowed on city streets. [...]

Citing more than 50,000 hours of tests conducted on the sidewalks of various cities -- including Boston, Chicago, Seattle and a trial run by the U.S. Postal Service in San Francisco -- without a pedestrian injured, [Matt Dalida, director of state government affairs for New Hampshire-based Segway LLC] said that supervisors and pedestrian advocates overreacted.

Why don't we wait until there's at least one accident before we work the old folks up into a tizzy, eh, Mr. Lynch? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2002 7:03 PM