The maker of Onewheel resisted recalls for almost a year.

Every single Onewheel is being recalled after four deaths::Future Motion, along with the CPSC, is recalling 300,000 Onewheel self-balancing skateboards. Four crash deaths were reported, and the company resisted recall last year.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.eeEnglish
    811·
    1 year ago

    And it’s probable that they were “exceeding limits” and 3/4 didn’t have a helmet.

    Natural selection.

    • Heratiki@lemmy.mlEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      Not wearing helmets is definitely a Darwin Award. But the OneWheel itself has a tendency to just shut off and nose dive when limits are exceeded. Usually at max speed. Even though it’s programmed and designed to be self righting it can sometimes not act correctly and just fling you off. So you could be cruising along just like you always do and when you start leaning too hard it will slowly nose back up and slow you down to keep you within the limits. But let’s say that’s happening for the 80th time and you happen upon a small rock at the same time only for the software to be unable to correct and nose dive into the ground instead. To the rider nothing would be different until the unit nose dived throwing them usually at full speed.

          • tsonfeir@lemm.eeEnglish
            22·
            1 year ago

            Some crashes occurred due to Onewheel skateboards malfunctioning after being pushed to certain limits.

            You: my car malfunctioned after going 150mph, it’s the car’s fault.

            The solution was to add a more obvious warning, that can still be ignored.

            You’ll hear whatever you want to hear though, and it has no effect on me.

            • thanks_shakey_snake@lemmy.caEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              Me: “My car malfunctioned while going some undisclosed and possibly reasonable speed. It’s bad that it malfunctioned, and the product would be safer for everyone if it didn’t do that.”

              I haven’t seen anything to suggest that the victims were all behaving excessively recklessly, as in your “driving 150mph” example. “Certain limits” is pretty vague, and based on context, sound like they pertain more to hardware constraints than to dangerous behavior.