In Los Angeles County, MTA's Blair said officers prize it because it allows them to stand a head taller than they would on foot, so they can see over crowds and cars and project a more prominent presence at events like the Rose Bowl parade.

The scooters, which travel as fast as 12.5 mph, also allow an officer on patrol to cover a much greater distance than on foot, and go indoors, onto elevators and other places bigger vehicles can't. Blair said the added efficiency allows a force to cut down on the number of patrol officers on each shift and recoup the Segway's cost in as quickly as a month.

In other applications, several bomb squads such as those in Ventura County, Calif., and Little Rock, Ark., are using Segways to transport officers in bombproof and hazardous-material suits that can weigh as much as 100 pounds. The Segway allows them to scoot in and out of a scene quickly, without having to waddle in on foot in the bulky suits. Segway marketing Vice President Klee Kleber said emergency workers responded to the London bombings last year on Segways, as traffic clogged the routes for larger vehicles.

Its inventor, Dean Kamen, famously predicted in a 2001 Time magazine interview that the Segway "will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy." In the same story, venture capitalist John Doerr predicted the company would be the fastest ever to reach $1 billion in sales. (At today's prices, the company would have to sell somewhere around 175,000 to 250,000 units per year for the Segway to rack up $1 billion in sales.)

Labels: segways