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Segway tour operator sues city over new regulations; says they could lead to deaths
By adamg on Sat, 06/18/2011 - 10:22pm
Boston Gliders, which leads tourists on Segway visits around downtown and the North End, yesterday filed a federal lawsuit to try to block the city's new regulations on Segways and similar wheeled devices.
In its suit against the city and the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, the company says the city council unfairly targeted it and its vehicles when it unanimously adopted the regulations on Wednesday. If the council is going to promulgate safety regulations for tours, it should do so for all tours operators, even those that lead visitors on foot, the company argues.
Boston Gliders says in its three years in operations, no pedestrian has been hurt by a Segway and that the city provided no proof the two-wheel vehicles were a menace to anybody, least of all little old ladies.
The lawsuit, which the company filed without a lawyer, alleges the regulations could lead to fatalities by requiring Segways to go at least 8 m.p.h. all the time, which is just not safe, especially not on Atlantic Avenue. However, the new regulations do not actually set a minimum speed but rather set 8 m.p.h. as the maximum.
The suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, says city officials never watched Boston Glider tours in action to see how safe they are and unfairly target Segways. The regulations site Segways as an example of "electric personal assistive mobility devices."
City councilors say they acted to prevent problems. Councilor Sal LaMattina, who first proposed regulations, said he was particularly concerned about senior ladies on the crowded streets of the North End and stroller-pushing parents everywhere.
The new rules ban Segways from sidewalks and parks - such as the Greenway, which also bans bicycles - and says tours must follow routes designated by the city transportation department. Segway operators would be required to give safety lessons to prospective riders, limit tours to six people and obtain a permit from the police hackney unit, which already regulates taxis.
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Comments
If the same roads are good
If the same roads are good enough for bikes they are good enough for Segways.
Glad to have more Bike Lane supporters!
Oh yes - I'm betting you have been lobbying Boston to join the 20th century? No? The Greenway doesn't have bike lanes even though it is fairly new. No lanes from the bridges, either. Boston sucks eggs. The city council should have to pass critical reasoning tests - I'm surprised any of them remember how to breathe when they leave their neighborhoods.
Because
He was told to use those roads, and instead used the sidewalks.
At least cyclists and scooter users are theoretically using one every day and getting better at it. People who think a Segway tour is better then just walking the few miles of the liberty trail aren't probably the best at handling them. Plus it's probably their first time on one.
Sure hope the public gets to speak out
I hate the sidewalk cruising Segways. Especially on the small North End sidewalks.
Then restrict certain sidewalks
Like Cambridge does for bikes, restrict narrow and busy areas. Then, like Cambridge and Somerville do, build a few gddmmmm bike lanes already!
Bikes lanes might be a bit hard in the North End.
Might work if the city also stopped granting so many parking permits. Too many people decide to live in the city and also drive. I'd like to see them used in something like a bike lane, but where can we make these bike lanes if there are so many cars?
Bike Lanes
There actually is a plan to put in bike lanes on Atlantic Ave and Commercial Street.
Good. The exemption for disabled people should nullify the law.
When something like a Segway is deemed inherently dangerous and banned from the sidewalk, it defies logic that an exemption should be carved out allowing disabled people carrying papers to ride a Segway on the very same sidewalk. Are Segways dangerous on the sidewalk or not?
So if I understand correctly, Tom Brady, Zdeno Chara, Paul Pierce and Jacoby Ellsbury, among others, are banned from driving a Segway on the sidewalk due to safety concerns, but Larry Flynt and Michael J. Fox have the city's seal of approval? The law fails on its face due to absurdity.
On a similar note, when applying to comply with the state's latest layer of beaurocracy, a newly required $11 permit to go fishing in saltwater, I noticed that disabled people are not required to have a permit. Why? Many disabled people are skilled fishermen and the disabled have long sought to be treated equally. By carving out exemptions and waiving fees and standards, government is peddling something like the soft bigotry that is affirmative action. Enough already.
Aww...
You're adorable.
Stopped 24-hour clock
Showing correct time this time!
saltwater fishing license
The Feds came up with the saltwater fishing license requirement. But they gave states the option to issue their own licenses instead.
A few annoying states did so, so they could get the money instead of the Feds. It would have been so much easier if the national license was valid everywhere.
Does he read English?
How could the guy file a lawsuit without having first read the lawsuit and parse the language therein? 8 mph maximum, not minimum.
Bicycles ride in the street all the time without accident at speeds of 8 mph or slower. But bicycles cannot ride on sidewalks in the city of Boston. Same rules should apply for Segways.
Bring back the red flag
Why don't they bring back the regulation requiring a person with a red flag in front of every motor vehicle?
This was passed unanimously? The City Council is even dumber than I thought. Or they must have got the signal from Il Duce that his shakedown attempt was rebuffed.
Segway Accident with Serious Injury
An ambulance just left a Segway accident in Christopher Columbus Park. The formerly healthy rider was just taken away on a stretcher, on a backboard, in a neckbrace, bleeding. They are neither safe nor legal.
Who did he kill?
If the rider left in a neckbrace, the person he ran over must be dead.
Oh? He only hurt himself?
So Scary
Good point, it could have been much worse.
An ambulance just left a car
An ambulance just left a car accident in (insert street here). The formerly healthy driver was just taken away on a stretcher, on a backboard, in a neckbrace, bleeding. Cars are neither safe nor (should they be?) legal.
Silly rabbit
Cars are neither safe nor (should they be?) legal.
Not driven on sidewalks, six abreast. Was that your point?
Just driven on roadways ...
... that were never designed for them. Sometimes six abreast. They crowd out the users that the roadway was designed for.
How many automobile fatalities this year? How many involving cabs alone (since they want the hackney unit to regulate)? How about "ran down a pedestrian" fatalities? Now, how many involving Segways?
Vehicle safety best measured by passenger hour.
I don't know how many accidents there were involving Segways (although i guess we know there was at least one, if the above report is accurate).
But since there are so very very few Segways out there, if the absolute number is non-zero, it would probably mean that Segways were significantly more accident-prone than autos. Safety is measured by accident/passenger-mile or passenger-hour.
Analogously, if there were only a couple dozen people in Boston with bazookas, and on average only one person a year was killed by them, would that make bazookas safer than hand guns, given the fact that so many more people are injured/killed with handguns per year? No.
***
I would like to note, btw, that I do not have a firm opinion wrt the Council's Segway regulation (although my gut feels that it's reactionary and too broadly written). I was just pointing out that there is some faulty logic at play in some of the arguments being made above.
Come again? Are you following
Come again?
Are you following some old wives' tale of cowpaths or something? Anything with curbs, a crown, and stripes has been designed for cars at some point, even if the original centerline was not. Can you name a single multilane roadway in this entire state that falls under what you're saying here?
Eh?
My street has granite curbstones, which were set in place a good fifty years before the invention of the automobile. It has a crown. It does not have lines. It wss most certainly not laid out or designed for cars. The same is true for many of the streets used by the Segway tour operator.
Is your street made of
Is your street made of cobblestones, oyster shells, and immigrant sweat? Or is it asphalt, with sewer grates, manholes, and various small steel portals for different subsurface utilities?
If the latter, then those granite curbs have been lifted and reset, and probably even replaced in kind, many many times since the automobile has been cruising these streets. It looks simple, but it is engineered for automobile travel--maybe not at 45mph or multilane, but some engineer somewhere has adapted it to meet specification for car travel.
This is an old city, but like the cells in your body that regenerate much of it is newer than we may think at first.
To say Hanover Street wasn't designed for cars is just wrong, it has been several times, and so has any other street in this city that has had major roadwork in the last 90 years or so, which I have to imagine is just about every one of them.
hypocritical coming from a minivan driver
Do you drive a car? A gas guzzling behemoth? I thought so.
Idiot
Car are heavily licensed and regulated.... which is what the city is trying to do with Segways.... To make them more safe, and to figure out how they fit into the car/bike/pedestrian usage of the city.
I know straw hats are in season, but sheesh.
Not just sidewalks and parks...
Adam - It's not just sidewalks and parks. The ordinance bans them from all public ways as well, which pretty much means that private use of a Segway is banned in the City of Boston. Course, if you have one, feel free to use it in your driveway.
The BPW definition-
Public Way:
Any and all portions of the streets and sidewalks in the city of Boston which are open for use by the public.
Pardon my ignorance,
but if someone is disabled to the point of not being able to walk, can standing on a Segway honestly be an option?
Absolutely
Here's one example of such a person. In fact, I'd say that MS (Multiple Sclerosis) is probably one of the most primed group of people for which the Segway is an excellent mobility assistance device.
Most people with moderate MS can stand and could even walk a few blocks, but prolonged walking or days where their symptoms have flared up during a recurrence can really be a problem due to a loss of motor skills and sensations in the extremities. There's a vast gap between early MS (fully mobile) and late MS (wheelchair bound) where people have had to make do, use a cane, or compensate in lots of other ways that wouldn't *appear* all that disabled to the outside observer. It really is a rather insidious, slow, neurologically degenerative process.
I'm sure there are plenty of other people in similar situations that don't have MS but find it difficult to be pedestrian for moderate to long distances, but still have the motor skills to pilot a Segway AND refuse to let their disability define them by putting them in a wheelchair sooner than is absolutely necessary.
EDIT: Here's a 2004 article from the NYTimes on exactly this topic. One thing they point out is while someone *might* have been able to walk under great stress and end up drained of energy at their destination, now they can focus their energies on other aspects of a disabled life because the Segway walks for them.
Speed?
So, it seems that you could address the mobility needs of people with disabilities and the safety needs of pedestrians by allowing Segways on the sidewalk, without asking anyone for proof of disability, but limiting their speed while on the sidewalk to 3 mph, the average walking speed of an adult. While on the road, they could be regulated like any other low-powered motor vehicle.