Salt Lake City Police: Segway toward Public Safety

[SegwayUtah]

The Salt Lake City police asked if I could meet them this morning at 10:00am in downtown Salt Lake and give them some demos; they have been looking to the possibility of using Segways as an alternative form of transportation. Robert Walz from ABC-4 news met us there for an exclusive TV report.

Medium Quality (3MB, 2 min 22 sec):
http://www.segwaychat.com/files/slcpolice_150.wmv

High Quality (8MB, 2 min 22 sec):
http://www.charonsoftware.com/video/slcpolice_high.wmv

Daniel Mauer, manager of "MagicScooter.com," a local authorized Segway rental location, stopped by and lent his Segway to a few people to ride around as well. Additionally, Barbara (ABC-4) mentioned that the local police force will be testing a Segway to patrol the 24th of July Parade and that ABC-4's staff will be riding in the parade as well. That's about 9 machines, and I'm guessing that Mr. Mauer was kind enough to rent them or maybe even lend them for the parade.

The police officers *loved* riding the Segway, and we chatted about the benefits of Segways for police forces (just a few: being visible in crowds; pursuing suspects--I showed that one when you see me in the background chasing the police officer; patrolling parades and public events; validating parking meters; and many more). The force was also very impressed by how a person on a Segway is so pedestrian-like and how safe and manueverable they are in dense pedestrian environments in comparison to, say, a skateboard or human-powered scooter (or even a bicycle to a large extent).

It will be exciting to see police forces all across the nation incorporate Segway HTs into their police forces.

Chris

P.S.

Thank you very much to Frank Tropea (of Segway Chat) for hosting the video.

[AtlSeg]

Great job, Chris! It is indeed exciting to see the continuing "spread" of Segways to police and other entities! By adopting Segways, the public in general becomes much more aware of both the possibilities for using a Segway, as well as the non-threatening nature of gliding.

Dick (Richard) in Atlanta

[Neelix]

Excellent, Chris, except for the bit at the end that suggested that Segway was based in Florida. Did you give the lady in the scooter a glide, or was she not capable?

-------------------------
Fear not, for even though I come from the Forbidden City, I surely do not agree with the rules.

[Wallace]

Thanks for the TWO video clips on Salt Lake City Police and the SEGWAY. This will be very helpful with our local efforts.

Tell Me Please. Why is the skin tone on BOTH video clips way off balance. The people are BLUE.

I noticed this on other Segway videos (ie, Seattle, WA and a training video from NH) Even the Stop Signs and the SEG MODE BUTTON are BLUE - Not Red.

[pdantic]

Excellent videos and a very nice job by the news crew!

BTW, Wallace - it must be your PC, as the skin tone and other colors were fine on my work and home PCs.

Steve
The Joy of Segs: http://www.joyofsegs.com

[Wallace]

I thought it might be my PC - DELL Opti-Plex GL-400 - but all of the PCs in the office show the same BLUE skin tones and conversion of Red Stop Signs to Bright Blue. Even my Home computer.

I went into WIN 3.0 to see whether I could find and HUE, TINT, Tone controls but to no avail.

Curious.

[SegwayUtah]

Yeah, Segway is definitely not based in Florida :) I guess since I told him that they are only available a few places and that I picked mine up in Celebration he got a little confused. Oh well; I'm sure people will go look up Segway on the Internet and it'll be easy enough for them to see where to get them.

BTW, the 24th of July is a major holiday here in Utah. It's a commemoration of the Mormon Pioneers (arriving in Salt Lake City I believe). There's a big parade, and most of the state takes the day off. In some ways, it's bigger than the 4th of July because people don't go on vacation so much.

Chris