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Bad Accident on Onewheel+


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9 minutes ago, Barrett Roberts said:

I completely agree.  It seems like they are trying to appeal to the adrenaline junkie market.   I don't know I have never understood that mentality 

Best wishes to your brother and a speedy recovery.  

Was he wearing any protective gear?

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Thanks for the info on the top speed.  I never paid attention because as I mentioned I'm not a speed guy.   

My brother is a big guy at 6'2" and 230 pounds.   So I imagine at 21.7 miles (as shown by the app) he was stressing the motor very hard.  He didn't mention getting any type of pushback before it happened just FYI.  

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1 hour ago, Barrett Roberts said:

So while he was going that fast the motor cut out and of course without the power the front of the board just slammed into the pavement which creates an almost instant stop throwing him forward. 

Very sorry to hear this. Wishing your brother a speedy recovery.

What I don't understand is that the onewheel design is ripe for the simple safety addition of small wheels on each corner to prevent the immediate stop on failure mentioned above. The idea has been bounced around here a few times about how such a mechanism could be added to an EUC but on the OneWheel the structure is already there.

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Heavier riders usually means more power demand, thus bringing the max speed cutout threshold lower than that of a lighter weight rider. (ie. lighter weight riders on the same wheel will always be able to theoretically go faster, kickback/pushback aside)

Dunno how conservatively FutureMotion chose and set that 19MPH as max speed (firmware) in relation to the no load cutout speed.

Edited by houseofjob
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2 hours ago, Barrett Roberts said:

No unfortunately.  Though in this case I doubt it would have made any difference.  He was thrown forward and tucked onto his shoulder.   Luckily did not strike his head.   The impact dislocated the shoulder and popped/punctured the lung.   All the abrasions are on his side.

All the normal places you wear gear to protect were completely unharmed.  However, if he hadn't rolled and had struck that hard on his head without a helmet he would most likely be dead.

 

So sorry to hear about your brother. I wish him a speedy recovery.

I know what you mean about the safety gear not being any good in this circumstance. I wasn't wearing any when I had my accident and even if I was I would still have got the stress fracture in my elbow and cracked a rib. Your brother got unlucky with the punctured lung too. As with his, mine cut off and the front just dropped and I had no way to react (not even time to use the power of the dark side!), it just slammed me to the floor. Luckily I was going slow because I knew something wasn't quite right but didn't know what. It's definitely different to misjudging a kerb or whatever and it falling. You can step off from that.

Edited by TremF
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1 hour ago, Keith said:

@Barrett Roberts, thank you for bringing this to our notice. I think Onewheels are underrepresented on this forum, so it is hard to know whether this is a one-off, or the tip of the iceberg - the latter I suspect.

Bottom line is that the same physics covers all electric motors, maximum torque goes down linearly with increasing RPM, and the higher the torque you engineer into the motor without making that motor physically bigger then the lower that max RPM where torque hits zero has to be. If anything, it looks like the Onewheel's motor is smaller than on most EUC's. Coupled with that the Onewheel is more likely to keep going after a rider falls off than an EUC is as it will not necessarily fall over. In which case there it has to have a high speed cut-off built into it for safety. Or will it, in fact,  cut off if you lift both of your feet off of the board as I know it doesn't balance until both feet are on the board. If this is the case then a negative G excursion like a hump, or jump, could cause it to cut out?

It is very concerning if it does not have any sort of tiltback mechanism, but surely, if it did, they wouldn't have that awful high speed leaderboard?

I guess what I am saying is there is an awful lot about how these boards function that we do not know? But one thing is certain, not only does injury risk increase exponentially with speed, but the risk of the board not being able to support the rider over any sort of bump or overlean increases linearly with speed as well - a lose, lose situation!

Short of a whole body airbag, the engineer in me says there is absolutely no way whatsoever that a single wheel self balancing device can possibly slow the wheel to a safe stop if the rider is trying to make it go faster, tiltback and warning beeps are the only mechanism available, to do anything else requires a minimum of 2 tandem wheels.

I can only speak for the V1 OneWheel, but there is a tiltback when you reach a certain speed (15-18mph) where if you lean back quickly to confirm you got the message and then power forward, you can "push thru" the high speed warning and achieve absolute top speed before catastrophy. Some claim you can manually balance the board momentarily at that moment and save a nosedive. I don't know that this is true as I tried not to flirt on the precipice. There is no other way the top speeds claimed (if true) could be achieved without a technique like this because we all had the same firmware and the tiltback occurs at the same speed for all of us in the selected shaping ("Extreme").  As far as cut-outs related to the sensor side foot coming off the board, you have about a second where you can disengage both weight sensors before the motor cuts and the wheel effectively brakes. I believe once you apply pressure to both sensors pre-landing, the motor engages almost instantly. Firmware updates seem to have caused the wheel to overspin in the air so that on landing there's a bit of a wheelie or rearing that's unsettling even if you become accustomed to it. 

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