Future Motion has been hit with a growing number of lawsuits after people died in accidents while riding Onewheel electric skateboards.
Onewheel is a popular self-balancing electric skateboard that rolls on a single large wheel — but since it hit the market in 2015, several people have died and many others have suffered life-altering injuries.
The first wrongful death lawsuit was filed in May 2020 by the wife and son of a man from Houston, Texas, who died of brain injuries when his Onewheel shut off and nosedived while he was riding it in a park.
Last month, two more wrongful death lawsuits were filed after similar accidents involving Onewheel skateboards that suddenly nosedived.
One of the lawsuits involved a Onewheel accident from August 2020 in San Diego, California, in which a man suffered major head injuries.
The other lawsuit involved an accident September 2020, in which a man from New York suffered head and brain injuries, as well as “multiple facial fractures, broken ribs, a broken right arm, and a punctured lung caused by his forward ejection from the Onewheel and contact with the pavement,” according to the lawsuit.
All of the lawsuits accuse Future Motion of downplaying the risks and misleading consumers into believing the Onewheel is easy to ride.
For example, even as wrongful death lawsuits have piled up, the company’s website still had advertisements claiming that “anyone can ride Onewheel with a little instruction and practice” and “Onewheel is packed with technology that actively helps to keep you balanced.”
Source: Onewheel Nosedive Caused Long Island Man’s Death, New Suit Alleges
They should be sued into oblivion. When your product loses the ability to self balance at higher speeds, they should have never gone to higher speeds, and their latest offerings are offering even greater speed, but have they dealt with the fact the unit can’t do both, go fast and self balance?
Buddy had over $45K in medical expenses, titanium pins etc. Because his unit just took a nose dive, stopped being able to auto balance at the higher speeds. That is a serious flaw.
If you wreck on a skateboard or bicycle do you sue the company?
Those are self propelled (skateboards and bikes) and don’t nose dive (STOP) at high rates of speed!! So you are wrong Michael
the problem here is that the thing just out of the blue nosedives the front end throwing the rider forward like a car crash. There’s no amount of balances to save that. It’s a major and very dangerous design flaw.
Not sure if I am getting/will need surgery or not but yes they are a hazard…
That being said its more fun than an E-skate even though it does not go as fast, in fact considerably slower than an E-skate. I have two identical models/years and there are differences in their power delivery between the two boards. Both have thrown me to the ground for different reasons. I believe my last fall was a pushback glitch at the perfect time, but ironically the app failed to record the backside of my ride.
They had the ability to design this board with audible warnings, they had the ability to design this board with lights that illuminate to allow the rider to know if the board was approaching a “shutoff” or failure state such as speed, battery life, overheating, etc.
They chose to allow users to ride a board that, when it reached a failover it would immediately power off thus removing the one feature that allowed the user to remain upright. The entire marketing of the board was to inform you of “pushback” and not to ignore it.
The design flaw of the onewheel is that leaning forward creates the
forward momentum so many people won’t feel or don’t feel the pushback if it occurs at all. Moreover, the onewheel has one single solution for a failover state which is power off completely, even it the batteries are good, even if you don’t approach the maximum speed of the board. The onewheel has failover logic that basically says failover = power off to save the board.
With ZERO regard or logic placed on saving the rider.
Terrible engineering with regards to the failover on this board that will result in countless injuries. It should have reserve power to allow the board to be slowed to a controlled dismount state with visual and audible warning that you are approaching a failover state. All off this was ignored and has been ignored and will continue to lead serious crashes and injuries.