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CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

cpsc.gov

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Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#391

Post by colecut »

rtkwe wrote: post #380
Auracle wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pushback is entirely inadequate as if you’re leaning forward enough you won’t have time to even feel it. It happened to me - I was using it to search for my dog that ran away for the first time ever. Because I was in a tizzy I wasn’t wearing my helmet, for the first time ever. Someone told me where she was - I floored it to get around a slow bicyclist. I nosedived. Luckily I had “fangs” on it that are a set of sm…

Isn't the way it keeps the nose up by speeding up though?

No, it uses battery power to self balance once it detects you standing on the board, the nose will stay up at a standstill.

This also means if you run out of battery power the nose will just drop on you.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#392

Post by conductr »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #384
conductr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed at 8mph on an electric longboard and broke my elbow, severely sprained my shoulder and wrist. I even lost some rotation and dexterity in my hand. It's one of those my arm is never going to be the same type injuries. I was 40 but skated and bmxed into my mid-20s and still felt pretty comfortable with my abilities on the ground (gave up on ramps long ago). I knew this was a risk given the speeds and even got a…

> That said, I think the electric unicycles are much more dangerous. Not really. They seem that way because they require skill to ride, but people hurt themselves on electric scooters much more frequently. (People judge "danger" based on how hard something seems to pilot, not on objective measures of failure. Tiny slippery wheels and points of failure in the frame make the electric scooter a much more dangerous vehic…

I think this is because of the “clearly not a toy aspect”. Riders often are wearing full motorcycle helmets, pads, and rash guard gear. It people geared up that way on other boards/scooters there would be less injuries too. I had no protective gear which was a mistake. I didn’t fully appreciate how speed would compound the impact if I took a spill. Honestly thought it very unlikely I would fall at all the day I did. I was taking a ride on a route I already knew very well.

I also think the initial difficulty of unicycles acts as a good filter so that people with subpar abilities simply don’t try. The rentable scooters are dangerous because people that shouldn’t be on them have a false sense of ability because it seems easy. Until they get to speed or take their eye off the road or something.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#393

Post by frankus »

frankus wrote: post #259
bombcar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/50-million-miles-on... and https://www.imarcgroup.com/one-wheel-electric-scooter-market might be able to get a rough number.

It looks like most death rates for transportation products are measured in deaths per 100 million passenger miles. So 8 deaths seems like a reasonable estimate. By comparison, cars are about 1.5 deaths, and motorcycles are 25-30. For the car number, I'm willing to bet that OneWheel riders skew younger and male-er than the general driving population. I'd bet the risk difference mostly disappears if you're comparing si…

One caveat here is that it’s not clear if it’s “4 deaths downstream of the procurement of a OneWheel” or “4 deaths attributable to this particular failure mode”.

There might be some number of “died riding a OneWheel after getting hit by a car” deaths, but arguably that particular type of fatality should be chalked up as “downstream of the procurement of a car”.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#394

Post by taylodl »

0_____0 wrote: post #23

One issue I've noticed with these new forms of electric wheeled transport (longboard, transverse and longitudinal one-wheelers) is that the people riding them often don't come from a sports background. They aren't "safe" devices exactly - it takes skill to pilot them, and when things inevitably go awry, it takes good reflexes to avoid damage. Novices to action sports often throw their arms out to catch themselves whe…

Yup - and by the time you don all the safety gear appropriate for motorcycle riding it's just not quite as much fun anymore, is it? Seriously though, you should at least be wearing a 3/4 helmet when riding these things and it wouldn't hurt to wear a riding jacket. It's all fun and games until you inevitably fall.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#395

Post by arglebargle123 »

MivLives wrote: post #280
arglebargle123 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another commenter posted about this in a separate top level comment already but it's worth mentioning here as well since you mention speed. The people who routinely hit 25+mph on a regular road bike know how to handle one at those speeds, many ebike riders simply don't have the handling skills or the experience to ride safely (for themselves and others) at speed.

Honestly I think the cap most people can handle is 15. After that is when things start getting much harder to deal with.

Yeah, you're probably right. When you start factoring in inattention and insufficient physical conditioning to control the bike (ebikes can weigh significantly more than a regular bicycle) it might even be lower.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#396

Post by s17n »

alana314 wrote: post #115
s17n wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pushback is extremely unintuitive, it should do pushforward instead.

Why? That would cause you to accelerate which would cause a nosedive.

Your natural reaction is to try to keep the board level, so when pushback happens, you push forward against it, which is telling the board to accelerate. Pushforward would be the opposite.

For what its worth this happened to me (I rode a onewheel without reading the instructions). The outcome was that I had no idea what was going on when pushback happened, and it was terrifying and probably dangerous, but ultimately my reaction to this scary situation was to slow the board down so I guess it worked.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#397

Post by becho »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #105
frankus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also seems like they could do haptics, i.e. superimpose an audio-frequency wave on the motor current. Similar to the steering feedback you get with a lane departure warning system. But then again it might be difficult/impossible to make it distinguishable from e.g. rough pavement.

An 80db piezo buzzer is $.13 and can operate on logic levels. No need to get fancy

Deaf people exist.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#398

Post by closetohome »

strix_varius wrote: post #296
closetohome wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are warnings on the box, in the manual, on a piece of cardboard you have to remove to ride the board, and laser marked on the board itself.

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.

It's amazing how hard it is for people to take responsibility for the accidents they cause. Their first instinct is always to blame the board.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#399

Post by FpUser »

1attice wrote: post #163
FpUser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"heartily recommend that other early adopters think about voluntarily seeking out additional training" Alternatively one can stop being an idiot and ride at safe speed. I bet that "additional training" would require at least this kind of sanity

Think of "idiocy" as the lack of intelligence, rather than a separate entity of its own, similarly to how high-school physics (and therefore, contemporary common sense!) understands cold as the absence of heat. This means that you can get rid of idiocy by adding intelligence to a system, in the same way that you can warm up a room with a space heater. But how do you build up intelligence? Put it this way. Your onboar…

>"Now, you can train you, but of course, you'll never know if the training was complete."

Deliberate practice I understand.

The proposed "formal training" for this specific case however would not know "if the training is complete" either. They'll just be taking your money.

Re: CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

#400

Post by Dylan16807 »

zdragnar wrote: post #387
Dylan16807 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Falling from a standing position can be dangerous. If your definition is "nothing is safe" then there's no reason to complain about 25mph in particular. > "Safe" is a function of the environment you're in and device you're riding- traction, obstacles, intersections, speed of other traffic, visible distance (fog / clear sky / bend in the road), wind, all sorts of things. So give an example. Either specify conditions…

It's not that "nothing is safe" but rather nothing is "inherently" safe. I've crashed several times going roughly 12mph, with only a few scrapes and no broken bones- once because by brake line snapped, once because my tire got caught in a crack in the road I didn't see, and once because a car pulled in front of me. Any one of those could have ended in a broken neck if I'd landed wrong. Going slower might have prevent…

Well specifically I said "inherently unsafe" which does exist.

But we can ignore the word inherently, because the post I replied to seemed to be objecting to 25mph in general, and I wanted to dive into that.

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