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My Safety Plan for Riding Electric Unicycles Exceeding 30 MPH

Risks of life-changing injuries are always present

Kevin Ann
7 min readJul 19, 2020

It’s been 6 weeks since I learned how to ride a self-balancing electric unicycle (EUC). It’s a King Song 16X that can reach 31 miles per hour and weighs 53 pounds. Luckily, I have not fallen at during those 6 weeks until the present, as I just rounded out my first 450 miles of riding.

King Song 16X with a 2,200 Watt motor, 1554 Watt-hour battery, fitted with side/power pads that can reach 31 miles per hour

I’ve been going relatively slow at around 10 mph, but have been emboldened to go faster as I build up experience and time riding. At first I only wore minimal protective gear involving a half-shell helmet and wrist guards, since it was such as hassle putting on all the gear if I wasn’t going too fast anyways less than 10 miles per hour. But as I have gone faster towards 15 miles per hour, I’ve added a full face helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and more heavy duty wrist guards.

However, I just installed “power pads” on the sides of my EUC that have given me far greater points of contact and increased the ability to accelerate, decelerate, and turn. This increased control lead me to hit 20.8 miles per hour yesterday. It felt fast, but not too fast.

I’m itching to go even faster and buy newer and higher performance wheels such as the Veteran Sherman or the Gotway Monster Pro, so I thought this is a good…

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Kevin Ann
Kevin Ann

Written by Kevin Ann

AI/full-stack software engineer | trader/investor/entrepreneur | physics phd

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