This is the real issue. People don't read the instructions and push the board out of its safety envelope, then they crash, get angry, and complain about it online.
I've read hundreds of crash reports, and never seen more than a handful that weren't a direct result of the user's actions. Actual system failures are vanishingly rare, and most nosedives are only as bad as they are because the rider is traveling at an unsafe speed and has not invested in the training or equipment to fall safely.
All self-balancing vehicles have the same failure mode -- that you can exceed their ability to catch you by leaning too far forwards.
The Segway benefits from having a big pole it can jab the rider with to make them learn back. But it's entirely possible to nosedive one if you try hard enough.
Disagree. All the warnings suggest rider error. I suspect that if they published, "We've determined that, on average, approximately once every N miles, a onewheel is likely to briefly fail to deliver power to its motor, throwing its rider at whatever speed it's moving," they would sell far fewer of these items.
Yeah but that’s not the case. You see a lot of the injuries because people on Reddit and YouTube and discord like to show them off, but in grand scheme of things most of these riders will tell you they were being idiots (like riding drunk at night, pushing 30 down a hill, trying to hop curbs at speed, ignoring pushback, etc), and many hop back on their board as soon as they can. The few that weren’t being idiots, well a fraction were lousy or inattentive riders and some fraction suffered a failure. What you’re not seeing is all the riders and boards with zero problems.
This could 100% be done in software -- it's already adjusting the wheel speed a thousand times a second, it would be trivial to add some haptic oscillation.
This is absolutely the case. When Onewheels were new they were mostly ridden by people who came from other boardsports. They knew the danger and treated them with the due respect, including taking the time to learn how to properly operate them.
In the last couple of years they've been wholesale adopted by techies who treat them like toys. The consequences are inevitable.
That caught my eye as well. If I wanted to buy some agricultural land in my state and convert it to industrial manufacturing, I would be mired in red tape for years.
Apparently it works with Find My as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they started rolling out premium features that take more bandwidth once everybody's free two years expires.
This is it right here! The "emergency" part is a feel-good on top of the real service, which is location updates every X time even when off in no cell service land.
Yea this must be the main feature. And is pretty huge. The emergency thing is icing on the cake.
Unfortunately GlobalStar is probably one of the worst satellite constellations out there (that I know of at least) for actual communication (SPOT devices used or still use GlobalStar and are famously crap compared to Garmin inReach on Iridium). Of course it could be improved and they do have the bandwith licenses which is important.
And I returned mine after learning that all the press about it not requiring a Facebook account wasn't actually accurate until today. Kind of a coincidence that the price went up $100 right before this went through.
Or putting the power button back on the top. Or going back to the iPhone 5's round volume buttons.
Both the placement and shape of the buttons leads to accidental presses and the inability to easily identify them by feel. Almost anything would be an improvement.
I've read hundreds of crash reports, and never seen more than a handful that weren't a direct result of the user's actions. Actual system failures are vanishingly rare, and most nosedives are only as bad as they are because the rider is traveling at an unsafe speed and has not invested in the training or equipment to fall safely.