Thanks for this detailed explanation.
These are everywhere in NYC. Last year, a guy who passed me in the bike lane on one of these ate shit for what seemed like no reason a block and a half after he flew by me. I stayed with him until the ambulance arrived and never saw him again, but I always wondered what caused his fall. Now I know.
It’s unfortunate. I met a guy who gushed about how amazing his high-performance EUC was. How it cannot fall over because it’s gyroscopically stabilized and I had to sit him down for a long talk to explain to him all the limitations of these things. He was under the impression that it had some kind of ABS braking, too, which supposedly made it safe to ride on ice.
They are often advertised to have E-ABS, which is just a marketing term for regenerative braking. It doesn’t actually provide the benefits of ABS on motorcycles and cars, which are smart braking systems which rely on traction-sensors from more than one wheel. Real ABS is not possible with just one wheel. And active balancers need 100% traction 100% of the time. They need torque to self-right, and without traction, there is no torque.
Yes, they are amazing, but they aren’t nearly magical enough to be stupid-proof. You need to know how they work to really ride them safely.
ABS only needs to sense when the wheel locks up, or stops spinning. You only need one when for that. Traction control usually uses multiple sensors, maybe you’re thinking of that?
Except a wheel doesn’t need to actually lock up for braking to cause loss of traction. Modern ABS systems don’t just pulse the brakes when the wheel stops spinning, it does so upon loss of traction. To determine whether traction has been lost, one wheel isn’t enough of a sample size. The ABS works in tandem with traction control.
Regenerative braking cannot lock up, which is where the whole idea of calling it E-ABS got started, but it absolutely can still brake hard enough to cause loss of traction. I experience it all the time when slowing down on gravel with my electric skateboards, for example. It simply doesn’t, and cannot, work the way ABS does on a mechanical braking systems, where braking is pulsed to regain traction the instant it is lost.
Yes, all ABS really means is anti-lock braking system, but what most people expect it to DO is to guarantee that traction is maintained while braking. (Even though that isn’t technically correct, either)
