CPSC calls for full recall of all Onewheel self-balancing electric skateboards

One issue I&#x27;ve noticed with these new forms of electric wheeled transport (longboard, transverse and longitudinal one-wheelers) is that the people riding them often don&#x27;t come from a sports background. They aren&#x27;t &quot;safe&quot; devices exactly - it takes skill to pilot them, and when things inevitably go awry, it takes good reflexes to avoid damage.<p>Novices to action sports often throw their arms out to catch themselves when they bail instead of rolling through the fall. They also don&#x27;t know how to navigate obstacles via strategic weighting and unweighting of their implement.<p>The energies involved are also substantial -- to put it bluntly, some of these things fuckin&#x27; rip, which is super fun, but also makes safety gear a good idea. You can take a lot of trauma and abrasion bailing at 25mph+, potentially life-changing or fatal in the worst cases. There&#x27;s a reason why downhill longboarders and an increasing number of electric wheel riders wear a fullface and leathers.

Reading this warning, I don&#x27;t understand why now? Is there a bug with onewheels that are causing this injury&#x2F;death? Or is it just rider error doing a dangerous activity?<p>Is the CPSC going to start warning against purchasing Rossignol skis or Santa Cruz mountain bikes because their respective activities are dangerous?<p>Participation in action sports and high-speed transportation will result in a higher expected mortality rate over the mean. I don&#x27;t know who in their right mind would think flying down a street at &gt;15mph on a single wheel would be _not_ incredibly dangerous.<p>Let adults make stupid decisions - whether that&#x27;s jumping off a building with a parachute, riding a bike down a recklessly steep hill or hurtling my body down Main St. on a sideways unicycle.

onewheels suffer from a problem known as nosediving in which the board shuts off when it can&#x27;t supply enough power to support the rider, as the board is self balancing this is a problem intrinsic to the board&#x27;s form factor. The board works in a similar fashion to balancing something like an umbrella on your hand, as the rider leans forward it creates an imbalance that requires the board to accelerate in order to keep the rider upright. The only possible safety feature to prevent nosedives is to inform the rider that they&#x27;re approaching the board&#x27;s limits, this is done with &quot;pushback&quot; where the board elevates the nose making the rider uncomfortable, signaling that they should slow down. Newer boards are more aggressive with pushback, it&#x27;s definitely a balancing act giving the user the most power from their board while also preventing them from nosediving, future motion faced significant backlash when their new flagship board implemented extremely strong pushback at a speed lower than a prior discontinued model

With thunderstorms, you count seconds &#x27;twixt bolt and boom.<p>With the current golden age of electrified last-mile transport, we&#x27;re seeing the gap between innovation and regulation opening up wide -- now several years.<p>Real-world impact: I routinely get up to speeds on my e-bike that are, quite simply, dangerous. It&#x27;s not that I <i>never</i> hit 25 miles an hour on my old road bike, it&#x27;s that I spend so much more time hanging out at ~25mph on my ebike that potholes have gone from annoyance to mortal danger.<p>The risk is somewhat mitigated by the enormous tires and superior build quality on the braking system, but not entirely. I&#x27;m glad to have taken a motorcycle license training course, and heartily recommend that other early adopters think about voluntarily seeking out additional training (and I imagine e-* specific courses are available now, if not soon.) Not all good ideas come with mandates :D

The physics of Onewheels are actually super interesting, and Future Motion published an extremely well-made video recently which explains the issue that the CPSC is referring to. It goes into detail about why &quot;nosedives&quot; happen, and how to prevent them. Really interesting stuff!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WGn7iPN07XI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=WGn7iPN07XI</a>

I love riding my onehwheel, but it is incredibly, stupidly, dangerous and the company DOES NOT CARE.<p>Out of the box, mine was prone to runaway&#x2F;ghosting where it would continue riding even if no one is on it. Kind of dangerous for a 25 pound device to go careening into the world. I contacted the manufacturer and the response was basically: &#x27;not our problem, you&#x27;re probably using it wrong&#x27; until I sent them a video that I had posted on social media.<p>I have also had the nosedive thing happen. Yes, it happens when you are exceeding the power output of the board. No, it is not clear when it will happen, for me anyway. There is the pushback &#x27;feature&#x27; where the front of the board is supposed to elevate, but as a 200 lb guy, it is pretty easy to miss. I suspect that smaller people might get a stronger feeling from it. It is also possible to exceed the power limit of the board at lower speeds where pushback won&#x27;t happen.<p>In reality, the board should, at minimum, have an audible warning that you are nearing the power limit before sudden failute.

One issue with the skateboard style of e-wheel is that your feet are perpendicular to the direction of motion. This means when the wheel quits or you hit a big bump you will have to turn 90deg before you can run. The unicycle style where your feet are parallel to the direction of travel is much easier to &quot;run-out&quot; if the motor quits. The unicycle style also allows a larger wheel and larger batteries.<p>I think reason the unicycle configuration is less popular is that it does not look as cool as the skateboard style. My wife calls mine the dorkmobile.

Never been able to understand why these don&#x27;t come by default on the Onewheels: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;land-surf.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;new-fangs-gt-built-tough-to-roll-smooth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;land-surf.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;new-fangs-gt-built-tough-to-r...</a><p>I put these on mine and love em. They work well and prevent exactly what&#x27;s being described.

There&#x27;s a heap of videos showing serious crashes on youtube.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ys3ivCUxIvY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Ys3ivCUxIvY</a> is titled &quot;OneWheel — The Deadliest EV&quot; and it is was published two years ago. It shows many short clips of some crashes in the first minute, however, beware, it is very uncomfortable viewing if you empathise with accident victims (I don&#x27;t watch American pratfall TV programming for the same reason).<p>That video also talks about another design&#x2F;usability flaw at 8 minutes 30.

I strongly disagree with this recall.<p>I own a Onewheel (XR) and have ridden nearly ~1,000 miles on it in a variety of conditions.<p>I&#x27;ve only had one incident and it was entirely my fault (riding at night without proper lights and hit a pothole).<p>The Onewheel definitely has a learning curve. Like most things in life if you are patient in learning it and respect the limits it is entirely safe.<p>I think the safeguards Onewheel has implemented are completely adequate (primarily pushback).<p>I think the big problem is people not wearing safety gear and&#x2F;or maxing out the board (speed specifically) too early.

I never realized how fast 25mph was until I fell off my two wheeled electric scooter going that speed and was slowed down by a bus-head impact after I braked a bit. Luckily I was wearing a helmet and long pants, but I still broke my back in several places. A cop that saw me whiff it said I was probably only going 10 by the time I hit the bus.<p>I believe all of these electric whatever should be lawfully mandated to go below at least 15mph if not lower. I don’t believe that people are able to grasp just how unsafe those speeds are.

It seems lax of CPSC to issue such a damning statement without an accompanying comparative analysis to other board or motor sports. What’s the injury rate vs other similar sports and how much of that is to blame from undereducated or reckless riders? Also, what’s the rationale for the recall if the issue is people ignoring the obvious warnings the thing is giving that the battery is about to die? This doesn’t seem to be a matter of system failures or inherent design flaws.<p>Paramotoring is risky, but no one is chasing all paramotor manufacturers to recall their products. Similar for dirt bikes. It seems somehow these are getting singled out due to their uniqueness and being a product from a single company, not because there’s a flaw in the design that makes them inordinately risky.

There should be a place for adults to purchase equipment for dangerous hobbies, as long as the risks aren&#x27;t covered up.

I&#x27;d be curious to know how many onewheels have been sold - my guess is that 4 deaths represents a very high risk of death relative to eg snowboarding, but without a denominator, there&#x27;s no way to know.

A guy at my gym was on one of these, it stopped suddenly and threw him. He broke his pelvis and is still rehabbing a month later, probably a couple months left to go. Guess he&#x27;s &quot;lucky&quot; he didn&#x27;t die.

I had my Onewheel take a nose dive for no reason. I had just started moving forward on it, was probably going 8-10mph. I broke my arm. I contacted support, and they told me nothing was wrong with board that they could see in their diagnostic. I haven&#x27;t ridden it much since as I can&#x27;t trust it.

My inner twenty-something and my not-twenty-something body will benefit from a report like this. I&#x27;m still reasonably athletic and those things look dang <i>cool</i>, but the pause a report like this gives is healthy.<p>I also agree with other comments related to motorized bicycles. I wear motorcycle gear even when riding locally and under 40 mph. Electric bikers can benefit from &quot;gearing up&quot;.

I can not believe it took this long.<p>After trying one for a bit I always wanted to get one, but never felt fully safe riding it. I even asked them repeatedly if they ever had a plan to introduce a board with some kind of additional set of wheels or bearings on the ends to let you &quot;roll out&quot; in the event of a power failure. The issues has always been that, in the event of a loss of power for any reason, because you are usually leaning forward, the board grinds to an almost immediate stop and you just go flying. Happened to me once in the sand and even that hurt. The board basically decelerates to zero instantly.<p>I thought long and hard about buying one and modifying the skid plates with a row of large ball bearings or maybe even small skateboard wheels. You just need something so that if the power fails you at least can <i>attempt</i> some kind of recovery. The way it is now, if the power fails, you are simply getting launched. I always wondered how they hadn&#x27;t been sued into oblivion, always thinking to myself, &quot;Someone must have died from this by now.&quot; I guess at least four people have… but somehow they&#x27;ve been able to produce and sell these for nearly a decade.

Do segways have a similar problem or is the vehicle large enough that it can always counter balance your weight?

One time I ran into someone who ran a consulting firm in the Bay Area at a meet up who told me that Onewheel had raised capital but had horrendous engineering when they came to this consultant. The consultants turned it into a product that could be sold.<p>I don’t know how true the story is, but whenever Onewheel comes up, I revisit that conversation, wondering if what that consultant said was true.

I&#x27;m a former rider of a Onewheel XR. I stopped due to not wanting to end up in a hospital during covid.<p>The nose diving thing has been known in rider groups for awhile. It&#x27;s always been a sporadic issue though.<p>Some caveats to One Wheels. Everyone mods these things. New tires, fenders, fangs, colored panels for protection, different back and front pads to stand on, and skid plates were pretty common on most One Wheels I saw. More extreme stuff like battery mods (one involved removing some of the battery protective plating to fit more battery in) isn&#x27;t normal but it does exist.<p>Future Motion sorta shut down the repairability of the newer One Wheels from my understanding. How many of these could be prevented by replacing a shot battery pack, or swapping in a new front pad? Not all of them of course, but if you&#x27;re relying on this thing to keep you upright, why make regular maintenance take shipping a 35 pound board in? I had to do a tire swap after about 800 miles, and I did 3 in my time owning the board.

My children&#x27;s grandfather is very good at sports and balancing and has been riding onewheels for as long as they&#x27;ve been around. My kids learned from him quite a while ago. Couple of years ago they each got a Pint from grandmother as a gift.<p>They always wear helmets but we had a hard time getting them to wear wrist guards, that is, until one of my kids pushed it to the limit downhill in a park, rode over the pebble, wiped out and broke his wrist. His app said he hit 17mph. Since then, there hasn&#x27;t been a ride without helmet and wrist-guards and they ride around quite a bit, to a store, around the city, to the park, just for the hell of it.<p>Breaking his wrist sucked for him but was a great teaching moment for the rest of his life, to wear right equipment for the job.<p>They always comment on people tooling around without helmets on those wheels or scooters. We as parents have a small success right here.

I own and ride a Onewheel Pint (17mph max) and found it limiting, so moved up to an EUC (electric unicycle) that goes 30mph. I always wear a helmet and come from an extensive background riding BMX on ramps and jumps, skateboarding, snowboarding, and mountain biking.<p>I agree with some other comments here that there is a learning curve and these are relatively dangerous for new riders, just like a skateboard is dangerous. But I do not think these are inherently more dangerous than a normal skateboard or bike. It&#x27;s just that the self balancing and electronic assistance can give an unearned sense of confidence where the rider is less cautious than they should be.

Onewheel is a bit of a special case in the sense that <i>if</i> it stops balancing, you tend to &quot;nosedive&quot; (tip forward) causing the front of the board to hit the ground and stop very suddenly, ejecting the rider forward as the back foot lifts and the front foot drops.<p>Given that electronics do stop functioning at some point in their life, if the onewheel is in motion when that happens it will be very bad for you, especially if you lack safety gear.

I purchased the OneWheel XR in 2016 and think it’s an engineering marvel. It has on occasion glitched while riding which has led to some falls. Speed and torque have degraded but it has outlasted my last 3 laptops combined. Anytime you get on a skateboard you are taking a risk.

I don&#x27;t know why the CPSC has singled out Onewheel. If they&#x27;re going to try and regulate this new class of mobility they need to do better than phoning it in. This feels just as random and absurd as the clampdowns on Juul. Don&#x27;t buy Juul, but do feel free to buy flavored nicotine from these thousands of other less scrupulous vendors.<p>There are absurdly under braked e-bikes with 30+ mph motors, electric scooters with 40+ mph motors, &quot;unicycles&quot; with 40+ mph motors, and even competing &quot;onewheel&quot; type products. Based on the arguments provided in the linked article these are all worthy of regulation. I disagree with the premise, but if they&#x27;re going to regulate one they should regulate all.

This reminds me of the Juul ban, which flagrantly ignored the trivial availability of competing vape products.<p>Then again, the Onewheel system is rather unique. I would be curious to see a safety comparison of Onewheel versus the much more common self-balancing unicycles.

On the one hand people seem to get good enough on them to be able to race down mountains. But they do seem somewhat dangerous when in the mix with cars,bikes and pedestrians. There is I imagine a learning curve.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onewheelracing.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.onewheelracing.com&#x2F;</a><p>They&#x27;re fairly uncommon here around Boston, and usually riders are wearing motorcycle style helmets. I see a lot more electric scooters zipping around (like the Bird and Lime ones, but privately owned). The only device I&#x27;ve seen someone fall off of was an electric skateboard (No particular reason (they were coming to a stop at a light and fell foward.).

I just wish more countries had the dutch biking infrastructure. I just bike to the city for 30&#x2F;45m on a long, bike only road that&#x27;s completely safe for everyone involved.<p>If I had to instead use devices like this on a road that can also easily have people walking on them, I can easily see crashes and many injuries happening.<p>There is just a need for making roads for cars smaller, and creating 2 extra separate roads for pedestrians and bikes&#x2F;electrical vehicles (would rather have 3 roads, electric bikes can be annoying, but it&#x27;s not always possible).

I have watched closely on my commute every day how people use these (SF&#x2F;Mountain View, etc), and I am stunned at how close to disaster some people are. They put their hands deep in their pockets with the controller, don&#x27;t wear helmets, have precarious backpacks that change their balance, etc.<p>You are one larger-than-expected crack in the road from being thrown off the wheel under a bus. At one point I rode scooters to work, but after one such incident (fairly benign but I could see where it was headed) I swore off anything so unstable.

4 deaths in all those years? Much safer than most forms of transport then? Of course I didn’t do the math but it seems like very little, perhaps there also aren’t that many out there?

The onewheel is an inherently bad, unsafe design. The long board that a rider stands on is ever liable to stick into the ground and throw a rider. Compared even to a monowheel (not the safest mode of transportation in itself), it is downright scary.<p>Generally, rider of a unicycle or similar self-balancing device puts his life and limb in the hands of an unknown microcontroller programmer. The software on those things should be regulated as strictly as the airplane autopilots.

Vehicles like this are not actually road legal in a lot of places precisely because of the risks to their users and other traffic.<p>That being said, I think a recall is a bit harsh though. People falling off these things are going to have injuries and occasionally pretty severe ones resulting in death. In the same way, snow boarding is not without risk. I think you can make a strong case for that being expected and just part of the risk that you accept using these things.

Title does not match link. Nowhere does it say a recall was ordered, it does say the manufacturer is refusing to comply with what I assume is a suggestion for a voluntary recall. Does the CPSC have the authority to order unilateral recalls?<p>I&#x27;m honestly considering buying one while I still can, they seem like fun and I&#x27;m just fine with the risks as long as there isn&#x27;t some hidden failure or manufacturing defect.

Oh good. I live near the beach where a lot of people ride and I&#x27;ve seen a few people take nose dives on them when they suddenly stop for no reason.

Honestly if the CPSC existed when motorcycles were invented, they might not exist. I gotta go with the Onewheel people on this one.

Not at all shocking; a similar product was recalled in 2018!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;recall.report&#x2F;recall&#x2F;843219020&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;recall.report&#x2F;recall&#x2F;843219020&#x2F;</a><p>Also a one-wheel, Electric skate board.

I dont see anything about a recall in this press release, just a warning for consumers. Looks like CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION (they call themselves in all caps) doesnt have any power.

One wheel scooter are generally more dangerous than their two or more wheeled counterparts because upon software bug or power loss, all control is lost. At higher speeds, serious injury is very likely.

the software on my pint is glitchy for sure. I have multiple steep hills to get out of my street, the pint will often times slowly lose its balance point meaning the nose gets closer and closer to the ground. When going downhill it is a disaster. Ill ride it around casually on the grass, but wouldnt use it for serious commuting.<p>It often times wont run with a battery overheating error when the app clearly shows the battery temp as fine.

They made 3-wheelers illegal, Onewheels seem not much safer.

I have a good friend who wrecked while on one of these, and he broke his collarbone.<p>I&#x27;m <i>very</i> surprised it took this long to recall them.

The Onewheel seems so obviously dangerous. Any vehicle that dumps its passenger when losing power <i>eventually</i> will. It’s just a matter of cycles before the lithium ion battery starts dying <i>fast</i>.<p>While it seems like a simple mitigation could be to make the “pushback” mechanism more obvious (i.e. slowly decrease the top speed as the battery loses power), it makes me wonder <i>what’s the point</i>? Can’t we let Darwinism do it’s thing here?

I&#x27;d be sad about this, but OneWheel is a godawful company and they absolutely deserve to go out of business.

&gt; There have been at least four reported deaths between 2019 and 2021<p>If it were invented today the bicycle would be illegal.

Cars, Motorcycles, Bicycles, Snowboards, Skateboards<p>I fail to see how this is more dangerous without real statistics.

What&#x27;s hard for me to get over is they cost as much as a used Honda Civic.

4 deaths in 3 years for a motorized vehicle sounds good to me

I guess they should recall all skateboards too.

Let’s recall all cars. I hear people get injured in them as well.