PSA: Inmotion V13 alarms and tiltback combined design flaw makes it unsafe to ride at high speed. Inmotion working on a fix

[Paul A]

3 minutes ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

"design flaw"

 

4 minutes ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

go the extra mile for the less fortunate is admirable

 

Might be an issue of public liability as well.

Documented (video evidence) flaw, Inmotion has been made aware of, and they did not address the issue....

Wheel logs would be proof/evidence of crash circumstance.

If a rider dies.......litigation/payouts in USA.

[novazeus]

yeah, if florida they kill a bicyclist like every other day.

safe paths away from cagers is more important.

and u know what the drivers of vehicles say? sorry, i just didn't see them. 

Florida had 5,952 bicycle collisions in 2021. These crashes caused 5,574 injuries and 169 deaths. In Florida, bicycle accidents are overwhelmingly caused by vehicle drivers. Of the 169 fatal bicycle accidents, Florida law enforcement officers found the vehicle driver responsible in 140 of them.

[Punxatawneyjoe]

9 minutes ago, Paul A said:

If a rider dies.......litigation/payouts in USA.

Yeah, a company in China is really worried about a US lawsuit. The manual tells you not to ride it like an idiot, they have safety's in place to attempt to stop you from doing it. Pretty sure Inmotion would do fairly well in a US lawsuit.

[novazeus]

like the fire thread, i'd be curious to know how many actual cut outs, not overleans, by each manufacturer going back to the beginning of time. 

[novazeus]

hopefully inmotion will institute a 200km restriction at 12 mph on their 3rd batch. that will give the riders a feel for tiltback and the audible alarms. 

mine is in the second batch.

[supercurio]

53 minutes ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

I think that Inmotion attempting to add additional safety measures is not necessarily a bad thing.

What do you mean "not necessarily a bad thing"? It's their duty and a requirement.

53 minutes ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

To call it a "design flaw" because it beeps at you then tries to tilt you back instead of beeping at you and beeping at you and trying to tilt you back is a bit of a stretch but the fact they are willing to go the extra mile for the less fortunate is admirable. They seem to be the only company engineering their wheels instead of back yard building them in my opinion. That's why it looks like an Audi under the hood instead of a 73 Dodge dart swinger. But where does it end? Electrocution? as Mango cleverly pointed out.

I was calling it a bug, but was corrected in a discussion by Mark Yu - product manager at Inmotion who qualified it himself as "shit design but not a bug" "bad design"

I'm being polite by rephrasing it as "design flaw", whereas Inmotion is being pretty frank on their own mistake. I don't disagree with him it's a terrible error.
I like a lot that they recognize it as such, instead of avoiding responsibility and deflecting like many other would. This is what's needed for progress.

[supercurio]

I made a video to compare both high speed accelerations that were recorded which triggered the 5s alarm delay.

One resulting in a crash and the other fortunately not.

 

[novazeus]

i guess a deaf human can't ride a wheel safely?

where i live, with the interstate noise, i can't hear anything, esp high pitch sounds. but i know what tiltback feels like. i always set my pedals to the hardest feel and calibrate the wheel to level. tiltback is ur friend.

Edited February 18, 2023 by novazeus

[supercurio]

@novazeus not at the moment unless using a wearable that vibrates, connected to an app like EUC World or DarknessBot.

I'm working on something.

Edited February 18, 2023 by supercurio

[chanman]

7 minutes ago, supercurio said:

wearable that vibrates, connected to an app like EUC World or DarknessBot

One of the problems with this is that going through Bluetooth and the device processing adds a significant delay from when the bad event occurs and you actually get notified, can be on the order of a whole second, and can fail entirely for some cycles. It's not a bad thing to have, but it's not a substitute from feedback from the wheel directly.

[novazeus]

serious question.

where can a wheel rider ride at 50mph?

a sidewalk? a multiuse path? on a road with cars and trucks.

it's unsafe to ride any wheel over 25 mph. 25 mph is fast enough to die hitting a car or a tree offroad. 

i told u, a bicyclist dies in florida every other day. dies! run over by vehicles!

where u ride is the most important aspect of riding a wheel and surviving. 

i like safe wheels, but stator slippage, motor axle bolts shearing, battery fires etc is what i want these manufacturers concentrating on. 

well, it will be interesting to revisit this topic if inmotion implements louder, longer beeps or whatever, and how many more overleans happen after implementation.

humans will be daredevils no matter what manufacturers do. 

[supercurio]

@novazeus all valid discussion points on general riding safety however if possible I'd like to keep the topic focused on the V13 safety systems issue, so people concerned can get relevant notifications on findings and progress as V13 riders. Thank you 🙏

Edited February 18, 2023 by supercurio

[novazeus]

tiltback is adjustable on king song wheels. mine are set at the maximum on both of my wheels because i'll never approach the speeds and i don't need the alarms or vibrations or tiltback. 

does the inmotion v13 not have adjustable tiltback?

couldn't u set the tiltback to 40mph?

[supercurio]

3 minutes ago, novazeus said:

tiltback is adjustable on king song wheels. mine are set at the maximum on both of my wheels because i'll never approach the speeds and i don't need the alarms or vibrations or tiltback. 

does the inmotion v13 not have adjustable tiltback?

Yes tiltback is adjustable on Inmotion wheels as well including on the V13 just like on your Kingsong wheels.

On Inmotion wheels, the transition will be more gradual, meaning that the rider will experience pedals shifting back a few km/h earlier than the maximum set, which is what a good amount of riders find annoying or fatiguing when riding at speed due to the uncomfortable posture.

3 minutes ago, novazeus said:

couldn't u set the tiltback to 40mph?

Setting tiltback and alarms at a significantly lower speed is certainly a workaround until the issue is solved by Inmotion. 40 mph would work based on the video and data we've seen.

[novazeus]

i asked about this before because i didn't know wtf king song was referring to with it's vibration alarms, but somebody said their app would make ur phone vibrate. 

never tried it. did get one of those arm band things for my phone, but never look at it. 

maybe u should check out how king song does their vibrate thing.

for the sake of science, i'll try it tmrw. 

Edited February 18, 2023 by novazeus

[Mark_Yu]

Hello, guys, I've get a lot of suggestion, anyone can send your ideas to me. I will pick the good ideas and adopt it on the wheels.

[techyiam]

5 hours ago, Mark_Yu said:

Hello, guys, I've get a lot of suggestion, anyone can send your ideas to me. I will pick the good ideas and adopt it on the wheels.

Are you a member of the Inmotion Design team?

Thank you.

[techyiam]

@Mark_Yu

I have a question regarding the Inmotion Response to the V13 shutting down power at about 83 km/h while the V13 was being accelerated hard.

The main point of my question is directed at Inmotion's Raptor Controller to shut off bus current so abruptly when bus current exceeded 80A for a couple seconds, multiple times.

I understand that the V13 motor is rated at 4500 W continuous power, and 10,000 W Max. power. 

Why wasn't the controller allowed to limit bus current to 80A or less gradually, and just let the pedal dipped forward, in reaction to the riders overly aggressive acceleration attempt? 

Why choose to cut bus current abruptly instead? 

Or, did the controller malfunctioned and needed a reboot?

[Rawnei]

6 hours ago, Mark_Yu said:

Hello, guys, I've get a lot of suggestion, anyone can send your ideas to me. I will pick the good ideas and adopt it on the wheels.

@Freestyler on this forum has created a very very good custom firmware for latest Begode wheels, his implementation of tiltback and light flash linked to PWM is very good, maybe you can collaborate with him on this.

[UPONIT]

Is there some sort of decibel limitation for consumer devices at play here? Because there are DEFINITELY incredibly louder beepers/buzzers/horns available for use if volume is such an issue?

@supercurio I think it is human nature to get tunnel vision when focusing on an issue and forgetting that our perspectives are not comprehensive. The top speed is stated. Constant beeping isn't necessarily more effective than 5 second beeping at those speeds. With respect, that isn't the "cause" of this incident. And drastic tiltback at that speed is dangerous.

The takeaway here might be that there is no universal solution for people who insist on using a device at its design extremes. Period. It is impossible to conceive of every single scenario. Designing to make a device safe for 99.9% of use-cases seems responsible. InMotion isn't at fault for wind noise or hearing tests or helmet choices, anymore than MTB companies are responsible when riders break bones when they do outrageous stunts and frames collapse. In this instance, if I were going balls-out and had ANY kind of hiccup, I'd 100% stop and figure out/test/research the heck out of it before proceeding. I do dumb enough stuff at MUCH lower speed!

We must take some responsibility for our own actions unless gross, foreseeable negligence is involved.

Edited February 18, 2023 by UPONIT

[Paul A]

10 hours ago, Punxatawneyjoe said:

Inmotion would do fairly well in a US lawsuit.

 

A litigant would not likely pursue a foreign manufacturer.

He/she would pursue the US distributor.

It is in Inmotion's interest to not have their products killing riders/bystanders, and their distributors subsequently sued.

 

 

https://www.markel.com/insurance/insights-and-resources/potential-pitfalls-for-distributors

Potential liability for distributors

Based on the protections available to distributors, many companies believe themselves to be fairly well protected against lawsuits arising out of product defects.

While this belief is often accurate, such protection can be minimal or nonexistent when the manufacturer and its insurer are located outside of the United States.

[Paul A]

52 minutes ago, UPONIT said:

Constant beeping isn't necessarily more effective than 5 second beeping at those speeds.

 

On 2/17/2023 at 1:51 AM, supercurio said:

Another rider experienced the same 5s alarm delay and reached the wheel speed of 58mph, luckily didn't crash but must have been very close to.

 

The issue/flaw is not beeping for 5 seconds......the issue/flaw is that there is a 5 second delay.

[UPONIT]

1 hour ago, Paul A said:

 

 

The issue/flaw is not beeping for 5 seconds......the issue/flaw is that there is a 5 second delay.

Of course. That's what I meant.

And if there was no delay, what would the next level of beeping need to be, to differentiate? And someone would think that the next level isn't clear enough. There is just no way to cover every individual preference, reactivity profile, regime of local customs, sensitivity to stimuli, etc.

There is no regulatory safety framework or agreed upon standard for warning us that we are in danger of exceeding limits. Expecting a company to meet one that we make up and apply in a very specific scenario doesn't make realistic, practical sense to me. Declaring in public that "the V13 is unsafe to ride at high speed" based on this incident, second hand and uninvestigated, seems irresponsible and could be considered antagonistic.

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. 

Edited February 18, 2023 by UPONIT

[Rawnei]

49 minutes ago, UPONIT said:

Of course. That's what I meant.

And if there was no delay, what would the next level of beeping need to be, to differentiate? And someone would think that the next level isn't clear enough. There is just no way to cover every individual preference, reactivity profile, regime of local customs, sensitivity to stimuli, etc.

There is no regulatory safety framework or agreed upon standard for warning us that we are in danger of exceeding limits. Expecting a company to meet one that we make up and apply in a very specific scenario doesn't make realistic, practical sense to me. Declaring in public that "the V13 is unsafe to ride at high speed" based on this incident, second hand and uninvestigated, seems irresponsible and could be considered antagonistic.

I mean this in the most constructive way possible. 

We already know from experience that continous beeping until under limit again works well.

 

Most people don't hear the beeps at these speeds anyway so a well working tiltback and/or transmitting PWM value over Bluetooth so we can setup a proper alert in an app is even more important.

[UPONIT]

Just now, Rawnei said:

We already know

Most people don't 

we can setup a proper alert in an app is even more important.

1 and 2: Broad assertions, not proven facts. Also, kind of mutually contradictory.

#3 sounds 100% correct. Give people all kinds of options for warning setup, then it will even more clearly be their responsibility to heed them.

But then we circle back to the same problem: What will the default settings be for those who don't wanna muck around with it?

I dunno, smarter people than me probably gave it a think or two in the design process?