Were laws really the reason why the Segway didn't take off?
I figure it didn't take off for the same reason non-overly obese people don't use Rascal carts. People were worried about being perceived as lazy. They're also really expensive, so you'd be perceived as snobbish as well.
Just look at Gob's character in Arrested Development. They didn't stick him on a Segway because he's a prudent person that needs to get to places in a hurry.
I've always thought Segway's failure was simply because it created more problems than it solved.
It was expensive, large, you had to find somewhere to park it, you had to remember to charge it, it came with an aura of snobbishness (at that price tag, not entirely undeserved).
And it solved... what? In suburban America it doesn't go fast or far enough to get you anywhere in reasonable time. In urban America the distances people walk aren't worth all of the above compromises.
The Segway makes no sense to the suburbanite whose main mode of transportation involved their garage door opener. The Segway also makes no sense to the urbanite who can walk 100 feet to the closest grocery store.
It was a marvelously cool technology looking to solve a problem very few people actually had.
It solved problems for cities and city planners. A Segway user could be like an enhanced pedestrian. You could have fewer stores serve a larger populace. It didn't get to do this because it didn't solve its own chicken and egg problem.
There are other, better, technologies in the same solution space, e.g. bicycles, which are more useful, familiar, vastly cheaper, more reliable (e.g. don't need charging, simpler all-mechanical design), and already have tons of existing infrastructure. Bicycles have drawbacks (e.g. the "what do you do with it" issue common to almost all vehicles), but nothing that the segway doesn't also have.
I figure it didn't take off for the same reason non-overly obese people don't use Rascal carts. People were worried about being perceived as lazy. They're also really expensive, so you'd be perceived as snobbish as well.
Just look at Gob's character in Arrested Development. They didn't stick him on a Segway because he's a prudent person that needs to get to places in a hurry.