Segway is trying to kill me, and they are also trying to kill you

Behold the majesty of the new Segway S-Pod.

I’m not here to make jokes about this thing, which apparently will be available to members of the public sometime next year. Granted, Segway has never managed to break out of the Google Glass-holy-shit-look-at-these-nerds space. Granted, the S-Pod leans way too hard into the overall vibe of Jeff Bezos’s throne room*. And, granted, while mobility aids genuinely improve lives, the bloated and unwieldy design suggests that any consideration along those lines was dropped in favor of a sleek and corporate — well, I’d hesitate to call it ‘coolness,’ but I can’t think of any better word, so ‘coolness’ it is.

What I am actually here for is to point out that Segway is trying to kill me, you, and anyone else who might ever feel the urge to walk anywhere. Am I overreacting to the magic chair? I don’t think so. Disagree all you like, but I cannot think of any other justification for a gyroscopically-balanced street chair to have a top speed of 24 miles per hour.

My master’s degree focused on predicting damage to human soft tissue from specific impact scenarios. While I’ve done my absolute best to forget everything I learned back then, I’ve somehow retained enough to feel comfortable asserting that getting hit by such a thing (plus an occupant) at maximum speed is going to fuck you up pretty badly.

And honestly, random murder strikes me as a fine business plan. What better way to convince people to buy this thing than S-Pod drivers being a mortal threat to the underclass of non-S-Pod pedestrians? You want to avoid being hurled into the street with a ruptured pancreas by one of these things? The best way to do that is to fork over the cash to end up in one yourself. That, my friends, is how to design a successful product in the era of late capitalism.

*We all know he has one, and we can all imagine what it would look like.