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GT16 Top Speed Test - Fall at 51km/h without protection


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27 minutes ago, enaon said:

I am not against protection gear in high speed rides, it;s only reasonable to wear a helmet and all in high speed.  

it is just that armoring up to protect oneself against a cut-off when riding along pedestrians, seems strange to me. If a cut off is a real probability in one's mind, then don't ride at all, or ride in the speed you can control where you and the wheel will end up, or don't ride along pedestrians. Armoring-up just provides for the rider's safety, everybody else is exposed to a possible uncontrolled cut-off, where they will have to dodge a free-running wheel and an armored-up person. 

Not armoring up when riding along pedestrians keeps things real, our survival instincts force us to ride slower, and everybody is happy :)

I respectfully disagree. Particularly as I get older, I'm going to wear more and better armor whether I'm riding slow among pedestrians or out on the fast bike lane. I just don't see how me protecting myself is putting pedestrians at risk. I understand your argument but I don't think it holds water.

Just another opinion.

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18 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

I respectfully disagree. Particularly as I get older, I'm going to wear more and better armor whether I'm riding slow among pedestrians or out on the fast bike lane. I just don't see how me protecting myself is putting pedestrians at risk. I understand your argument but I don't think it holds water.

Just another opinion.

sure, maybe it's the language barrier, I didn't meant it to sound like the truth, I  just wanted to give a possible justification.

But for the sake of the argument,  imagine a sidewalk where people, not on an EUC, are just walking, wearing helmets and protection gear. Wouldn't that be strange, would you feel relaxed if you were not wearing one?

I am getting older too, this is why I like to talk about it :)

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48 minutes ago, enaon said:

But for the sake of the argument,  imagine a sidewalk where people, not on an EUC, are just walking, wearing helmets and protection gear. Wouldn't that be strange, would you feel relaxed if you were not wearing one?

I would wonder where the hell i woke up, and be rather curious at these strange people.. but i would not be afraid of the situation.  I am imagining when they see me on an Electric Unicycle with my helmet they are thinking something simular? :) 

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24 minutes ago, Alex_from_NZ said:

I would wonder where the hell i woke up, and be rather curious at these strange people.. but i would not be afraid of the situation.  I am imagining when they see me on an Electric Unicycle with my helmet they are thinking something simular? :) 

maybe so. :)

It's not a matter of perception thought, when wearing a helmet one is more dangerous to other pedestrians if he falls/trips etc, his face is hard plastic. :) 

 

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It is a matter of perception, just from a different perceptive..

12 minutes ago, enaon said:

maybe so. :)

It's not a matter of perception thought, when wearing a helmet one is more dangerous to other pedestrians if he falls/trips etc. 

 

As opposed to a person carrying a briefcase?  Or how about pushing a stroller?  Should they also be banned?  ;) 

And *clears throat* on that basis your honour.. I disagree someone wearing a helmet makes them more dangerous to others than the baseline danger already encountered, and therefore i render your argument moot. :) (if i can do that, can i do that?) 

Jokes aside, im sooo right and your wrong so just admit it :D :lol:  :eff00eab1e:

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jokes aside, if you were right the police would carry suitcases, not wear helmets. 

Anyway, this talk is not about wrong/right the way I see it, it is a matter of clarification, "safety first" means "my safety first, everyone else take cover" :)

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1 minute ago, Alex_from_NZ said:

I dont understand this.. How does a helmet make me more dangerous to you than @Hunka Hunka Burning Love with his briefcase full of...things?

I am not sure I can really explain it, even if I do have a point. My native language is Greek, and I do sense that I lost you a while back, it seems a mission impossible now. 

I will give it a try, give me some slack if you will as well.

When wearing a helmet, when you have protection on, your brain is aware of it, suddenly a bus stop full of people is not a grave danger, you can handle the fall if something goes wrong, and it does, and you don't get hurt because you were armored up like rambo. But someone else will, not every time, but you take the risk and give it away.

I am not saying we should not do it, just that it is still dangerous, to others. 

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2 minutes ago, Alex_from_NZ said:

I think i understand what you are saying, i just disagree :) 

I get that you disagree, this is why I am not sure I put it in the right context, I cannot see how this is a matter of right/wrong, but then again we are in a forum :)

 

so we agree to disagree for now, and see how it goes :)

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just to put things in perspective, I am over 45, and I do ride myself, I am with the good guys :lol:

It is just that I don't want it to cut-off, don't want to be prepared for it, if I really give it a thought, I wil leave it home and take the car. :(

this is my journey till now :)

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, enaon said:

just to put things in perspective, I am over 45, and I do ride myself, I am with the good guys :lol:

It is just that I don't want it to cut-off, don't want to be prepared for it, if I really give it a thought, I wil leave it home and take the car. :(

this is my journey till now :)

So you're a "stick your head in the sand" kind of guy :P

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1 minute ago, Marty Backe said:

So you're a "stick your head in the sand" kind of guy :P

Maybe, been riding bikes for 30 years, never wear a helmet or gear, only glasses for the insects, couldn't really get the logic behind it, I didn't want to fall, if I really had to do something about it I would get a car. I eventually did. But now I have a second life, a unicycle. :)

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4 hours ago, enaon said:

Not armoring up when riding along pedestrians keeps things real, our survival instincts force us to ride slower, and everybody is happy 

Ok. Although it didn't have much to do with the original point I was making about older guys and our trials and tribulations riding,  I think that I understand from where you were coming with this point. 

I can't disagree with you at all because I don't always suit-up in a coat of armor when I ride. For example, DC has a large network of very nice paved bike trails that run throughout the DC metropolitan area (DMV). These trails are inherently low speed and are filled with pedestrians and cyclists with whom I must share the trail.

I am usually below 10mph. I love riding these trails. These are not like the dirt trails that @Marty Backe rides in the California hills. My trails are quite sissyfied compared to those; they are nicely paved and low speed. So when I know that I am going out on my wheel specifically to ride the trails I sometimes wear no equipment at all. However, when I go out to ride in this fashion I do not veer from the purpose of this ride: I stay low speed and I stay on the trail. 

On the other hand I often take rides where I know that I will be out on the streets of DC. I usually wear equipment on these excursions because the riding is mixed. Riding on the streets of Washington is dangerous at all times. Period. The riding in these situations is often mixed: streets, sidewalks, alleys, bikelanes and the overcrowded DC subway system (trolleying the wheel). I am dealing with all sorts of hazards: Cars, buses (DC EUC rider @Ruslan recently had his KS16 destroyed by a Metrobus), pedestrians, debris, potholes, emergency vehicles, taxis, couriers,  timeshare hustlers, tourists, etc.

During these excursions I am at times on the sidewalk riding alongside pedestrians and wearing equipment when I assess that to be the safest place to ride the wheel. When the sidewalks are too crowded with pedestrians it becomes dangerous to ride alongside them so I shift to the street or bikelane and vice versa - quickly adapting to ever-changing conditions because that's is what riding in my urban environment requires. Whenever I embrace the adventure of urban riding, I gear up, but I would be lying if I said that I was committed to wearing gear every single time I step on my wheel platforms to ride. Either way I don't feel that my choice to wear or not wear equipment has any impact on pedestrians when I am on the sidewalk among them.  

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1 hour ago, Lutalo said:

Ok. Although it didn't have much to do with the original point I was making about older guys and our trials and tribulations riding,  I think that I understand from where you were coming with this point. 

Either way I don't feel that my choice to wear or not wear equipment has any impact on pedestrians when I am on the sidewalk among them.  

I agree, I ride the same mixed conditions and don't gear up, but that is a risk I like to take, you don't and it's ok, better maybe.

I was referring to armoring-up as a counter-effect to a cut-off. I was trying to say that if a cut off is a real possibility in our mind, regardless the age, we should keep in mind that when riding along pedestrians the danger exist for us with no helmet, for the others with a helmet.

Since you ride across trafic and all that, I guess you are not afraid of a cut-off actually happening, we are talking about something else I think.

If a cut-off is not in the table, then I am not sure why Marty''s statement is true. I have heard people say the same about riding bikes, one will have a bad accident, not true in my experience.  

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4 hours ago, Alex_from_NZ said:

I dont understand this.. How does a helmet make me more dangerous to you than @Hunka Hunka Burning Love with his briefcase full of...things?

:ph34r:  Depends on which suitcase you are referring to.  :whistling:  But I digress... what are we talking about here?  You’re all free to wear or not wear whatever you like.  Cruise at 12 kph with full riot gear on or go at 45 kph naked.  

As long as you’re careful riding around others that’s the important thing.  I’m having fun riding my one wheeled ride, and other people can think what they want.  Doesn’t matter to me much.  If they want to jump out of the way while I’m all geared up crawling by at 3 kph - that’s totally their choice!  I steer wide of little tiny kids and dogs as they are random, unpredictable obstacles.  Safety gear is for my safety.  Others can read whatever they want into it.  I wish someone would invent some EUC specific arm/shoulder protection that helps cushion faceplants.  That would be cool.  :thumbup:

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If speed were the only danger, I could understand people saying they prefer less gear and lower speeds. But as has been said before: our machines are fairly simple. There is a wheel with pedals and a motor, wired to a control board with switch circuits, a couple of gyros and a controller chip, fed by a couple of battery packs with battery controllers. If ANY of those fail in any significant way, we're usually going instant FP. It really doesn't matter if you go 5mph or 25mph when the failure happens, you're likely to be smashing into the ground anyway. The difference is with how much force.

Even going 5mph, FP without gear would be very very painful. My first crash was a BMS failure at less than 5mph, and I was on the ground before I could say "sh*t". I barely had time enough to make sure I landed on my arms rather than on my face, and do so with a correct angle to minimize the shock on my bone structure. The trick with jack knifing, is to land with your hands fairly close to each other and the elbows far apart, so that your arms form a triangle. That way the downward force won't travel up your arms into your shoulders and break your bones there, or at least it is less likely. The trade off, is that your muscles take a lot of strain, so you can bet your ass you will be sore as hell afterwards.

Without gear, I would have cracked my elbows and maybe one or more bones in the wrist area. Had I failed to get my arms up, my face would have eaten the asphalt. I have a friend who "just went to the shop" on a bike and fell att walking pace because of wet leaves. She cracked her head on the curb without a helmet. Now NINE months later, she still wear noise cancelling headphones, since she can still not really take the buzz of a lot of people speaking in the background. The first three months, it was touch and go if she would be fully recovered.

We're grown ups, and everybody has the right to make their own choices. Like if their "protective" headgear is a full face helmet or a fedora... (hello @Tishawn Fahie :P). But if you choose to go with less than what will save your bacon if the fecal matter hits the rotating impeller, at least do so knowing what you're in for.

And @enaon, I felt more than slightly incredulous with the reasoning that we would be more dangerous to pedestrians because we gear up... I utterly fail to see how. What makes us dangerous is if we ride dangerously: Not enough margin of safety, in ways that make others react irrationally because of fear, with less awareness of others, of obstacles or upcoming situations - and generally faster than those surrounding us. If you ride more irresponsibly with gear than without, then I could maybe follow your reasoning. But in my book riding responsibly is an active choice, not something that should be nullified by pieces of polymer and plastic covering vulnerable parts of the only bloody body we will ever own.

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1 hour ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I could see a dual purpose with that while riding past some cute ladies!  :w00t2:  :whistling:   Protection and convenience!  I like it!

BYOB Bring your own bed. Or did you mean the concealing effect?

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I think everyone is missing the point that @enaon is making (the same point I made earlier), which is not to make pedestrians feel intimidated and at risk. We are talking about a specific situation here (a narrow path where pedestrians can't be given a wide berth). Riding at speed on a narrow path, armoured up in protective gear, gives an impression of aggressive/reckless riding (hence the need for armour) and signals oncoming danger/risk to vulnerable people that aren't armoured up. This can be very intimidating to older people or those with young children. If one wears less armour and rides slower it is less intimidating as the rider is also at greater risk and this signals that they are likely to take more care around others.

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On 12/7/2018 at 4:34 PM, travsformation said:

As an additional detail to this thread, there's a video making the rounds of the victim in question riding out of the hospital on his EUC

For the record, I was contacted by the victim in question, @Reciodvd, who informed me that the information I provided above was false. A good example of how unreliable second/third/fourth-hand information can be...

He didn't hop back on his EUC until 3 weeks after the accident, when his stitches had been removed.

I apologise for spreading false information and didn't do so intentionally.

@Reciodvd Me disculpo por haber divulgado información falsa, no lo hice a propósito.

 

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11 hours ago, enaon said:

I am not against protection gear in high speed rides, it;s only reasonable to wear a helmet and all in high speed.  

it is just that armoring up to protect oneself against a cut-off when riding along pedestrians, seems strange to me. If a cut off is a real probability in one's mind, then don't ride at all, or ride in the speed you can control where you and the wheel will end up, or don't ride along pedestrians. Armoring-up just provides for the rider's safety, everybody else is exposed to a possible uncontrolled cut-off, where they will have to dodge a free-running wheel and an armored-up person. 

Not armoring up when riding along pedestrians keeps things real, our survival instincts force us to ride slower, and everybody is happy :)

I don't think you realize that all our wheels can stop working at anytime whether you are going fast or slow.  The possibility is there and risk isn't as low as you think.  None of the components in the wheels are redundant except for maybe the batteries if you look at it being parallel packs.  You don't have to be going fast for it to fail.  Some of the worst falls I've seen are of people going slow and no protection.  Slow means under 15mph.  You would think you it is with in reason you can react fast enough to "run it off".  Without warning there is no reaction and no possibility of a run off.  You just slam to the ground.

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4 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

 You’re all free to wear or not wear whatever you like.  Cruise at 12 kph with full riot gear on or go at 45 kph naked.  

I like to go out late at night and ride at 45 kph. I let the little guy point the way. .............  Just for the record people look less alarmed when I am all suited up with full body armor.  

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2 minutes ago, RockyTop said:

I like to go out late at night and ride at 45 kph. I let the little guy point the way. .............  Just for the record people look less alarmed when I am all suited up with full body armor.  

:roflmao:

I'm now looking at your nick and trying to picture what Rocky Top actually means given this "information"... :P 

I'm not sure I want to come up with an answer...

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