The Last Straw: It's not often that your heart sinks in the Jardin des Tuileries, but mine sank there last weekend when I saw a group of tourists using the latest form of transport to have crossed the Atlantic eastwards.
At first I thought I'd stumbled on the set of a bad science-fiction movie. Then I realised the appalling truth: the Segway had arrived in Paris.
In case you've missed news of this exciting invention, the Segway is what its makers call a "personal transportation device". It looks like an old-fashioned, two-wheeled lawnmower, except that in this case you stand on the lawn-mower rather than behind it. Also, it doesn't cut grass, although critics argue that its potential to mow down pedestrians is considerable. In the US, they call it the "SUV of the sidewalk", except in cities such as San Francisco, where it's already banned from sidewalks.
The Segway is an impressive piece of technology. Battery-powered and controlled by sophisticated software, it is self-balancing and capable of responding to subtle body movements. It does this by calculating, 100 times per second, the location of its user's centre of gravity. When you lean forward, it goes forward - at up to 12.5 miles an hour. When you lean back, it reverses. And when you straighten up, it stops.
When you forget to switch it on, as George Bush did last year, it causes you to fall off and make a fool of yourself before a worldwide audience of millions. The Bush incident was a major setback for the Segway's inventors who, until that point, were insisting it was almost impossible to topple. But then everybody remembered that the President had previously injured himself by falling off a couch, which was also not switched on at the time, and the Segway's reputation recovered.
Users are urged to wear helmets, as the Tuileries group did - a fact that only added to the weirdness of the scene. Unfortunately, the Segway's sophisticated technology has not yet reached the point where it can prevent its passengers looking stupid.
But the website for the Paris tour deals skilfully with this issue. "Discover what it's like to be a Parisian celebrity," it says, "as everyone - and we mean everyone - turns to watch us glide by!" Watching them, however - and with admiration as well as curiosity - is all Parisians seem to do. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it seems to me that stone-throwing would be a more appropriate response. But the truth is the French are infatuated with new technologies, especially in transport, and it's easy to see why the Segway manufacturers have targeted Paris as a gateway to Europe.
Only last year, the French capital piloted the so-called "Trottoir à Grande Vitesse", a 9kph conveyor-belt footpath through Montparnasse railway station. So you can see how the Segway would appeal. Also, despite having the world's best underground system, the French capital still has atrocious traffic. City and tourist buses move at an average 9kph. But that must be on a good day, because the one I travelled on into Paris was so slow we were being overtaken by developments in medicine. All told, the Segways were probably the fastest moving objects on the surface of the city last weekend, with the possible exception of Thierry Henry (and unlike the Segways, he was no threat to anyone).
Of course, Paris boasts many wide footpaths and open spaces where Segway users and pedestrians might happily co-exist. Against that, its pedestrian population includes the world's highest concentration of lovers. The potential for tragedy is obvious in a situation where large Segway users (getting larger by the minute through lack of exercise) are sharing space with dreamy young romantics, whose movements - as transport planners know - can be unpredictable.
A standard defence of the Segway is that it affords mobility to those who can stand but have difficulty walking. The US vice-president used one to get around his office when he had an Achilles tendon problem. But apart from the philosophical issue of whether Dick Cheney's ability to get around his office is a good thing, surely the marginal advantage to the partially disabled and the threat posed to those currently without disability cancel each other out.
Either way, it's unlikely the Segway will be a feature of life in Ireland anytime soon.
Sophisticated as it is, the technology appears to require reasonably flat, smooth surfaces. As I've said before on the subject of the trottoir rapide, this country hasn't mastered the basic, stationary footpath yet. The condition of most walkways would make it difficult for a Segway to calculate accurately the position of the user's arse vis-a-vis his elbow. Centre of gravity would surely be too big a challenge.
