Segways dangerous on the bike path

Used as we are to having the safety rules on the Santa Monica Bike Path honored mostly in the breach, it was still dismaying to see the photograph in Friday's Santa Monica Daily Press of the gaggle of Segways blocking the route.

The rule against motorized vechicles on the bike path is clear and unambiguous. It's also one of the few regulations that is routinely enforced, and for good reason: the margin of safety on the path is already dangerously compromised without the addition of heavier, self-propelled vehicles piloted by unskilled, often juvenile drivers.

Segway probably figures that as a national corporation with a showroom in Santa Monica, they can get away with ignoring laws that, if you are a young weekend visitor to Venice, can get you a moving violation if you dare to venture north of Navy on your rented scooter. If Segway wants to hold sales pitches by the beach for buyers of its pricey gadget, there is a huge, nearly empty parking lot south of Pico that the city is always happy to rent.

As admirable as these vehicles may or may not be (and, personally, I'd be happy see them clogging our streets; but, remember, there are enough questions about their safety for bans to have been considered or imposed in locales as divergent as Toronto, San Francisco and Disneyland), whether or not they are a solution to our commuting woes, they don't belong on the bike path.