"At the very end of my ride, the joystick came loose, and the Segway egg (and I) crashed into the wall."

Cut Short

If you didn't have trouble walking prior to trying out Segway's S-Pod, you might afterward.

During last week's Consumer Electronics Show, Segway gave attendees the chance to test out its self-balancing electric wheelchair for themselves — but had to cut the demo short after a journalist crashed the device into a wall, the BBC reports.

Slow Lane

The egg-shaped S-Pod has a maximum speed of 38 kilometers per hour (24 miles per hour). The demo chair, however, was limited to just 12 kilometers per hour (7.5 miles per hour) — though a crash at that speed was clearly still enough to put an end to the CES demo.

Segway told the BBC that no one was hurt during the crash. It apparently doesn't plan to take any chances with future versions of the chair, though, as Jeff Wu, Segway's director of marketing, said the company plans to add a safety belt to the design.

Crash and Burn

The BBC report doesn't name of the journalist in the S-Pod at the time of the demo-ending crash, but The Verge's Sean O'Kane did write that he hit a wall during his demo. 

"At the very end of my ride, the joystick came loose, and the Segway egg (and I) crashed into the wall," he wrote. "Thankfully, there was no great fall."

That means either O'Kane was the journalist behind the joystick during the crash — or controlling the device isn't as easy as Segway might want you to believe.

READ MORE: CES 2020: Segway’s prototype wheelchair crashes at tech show [BBC News]

More on the S-Pod: Segway’s New "Personal Transporter Pod" Looks Really Familiar


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