I saw a young guy (about 25 years old) going about 40 miles per hour on what can be best described as a single fat tire.....guy was standing up and not wearing any helmet.
I saw it today. I have never seen anything like it before. Later, when I got home, I GOOGLED until I saw that single fat tire, stand-up, powered unicycle thing.
It seems that it is a Begode. It appears they are a new thing that came out about six months ago. They sell for about $3100.00 US dollars.
Top speed is said to be around 42 miles per hour.
The 25 year old guy riding it was riding it as if it were a car, or motorcycle. The acceleration from a standstill to 35 mph rivals a 350cc Honda/Suzuki/Kawasaki/Yamaha motorcycle. The tire itself is fat like some 21st century motorcycle tires are. I was shocked to see somebody going that fast, on a heavily trafficked road, single file with about fifteen cars, suvs, and pickup trucks, taking the left of center like a motorcycle would, accelerating quickly and maintaining pace with traffic, but NO HAND SIGNALS, No brake lights that I could see, No turn signals that I could see, No lights of any kind...
It was all stand-up on some minimal standing board platform......the whole thing looked like if you imagined an all black, very minimal segway type of thing with a single big wheel/tire that is super fast unlike a segway type thing.
I would imagine that the young guy recently purchased it, and he probably was ill informed, too stupid, or just didn't care that the probability that he encounters the local police who inform him that such a device,"vehicle" is unlawful to ride on public roads with motor vehicle traffic.
Back in 1977, a buddy of mine with a lot more money than sense, purchased a gasoline powered skateboard, that had been featured in a drive test report in either Road & Track, or Car & Driver (both then popular car magazines) as a lark. The skateboard had a small chainsaw/weedwacker type gas engine and a cable throttle that the rider held in his hand. I think the gas powered skateboard was called the Moto board. Anyway, he rode this thing for miles and miles on residential side streets, avoiding major streets. The local police would stop him about every day, and tell him that you cannot be riding the gas powered skateboard(motoboard) in the street as if it were a vehicle. He would say thank you officers, I didn't know that, and then would go back to doing it anyway. Well this went on for about three weeks, and he encountered some of the same police officers again, who told him that they recognized him as the guy they told not to do it again just a week before. The officers thought of ticketing him but left him go, with a Reed & Malloy type speech saying that he could get hurt if he hits a rut, stick, pothole, pebbles, or rocks and goes down and then a car, van, stationwagon, or truck runs over him because they don't see him on the ground until its too late. Anyway, he kept on riding the motoboard in the street, just being more wary of the local police. Well some of his luck ran out as he hit a combination of road irregularities, ruts, slight pot hole and debris and was sent flying off the gas powered skateboard and though he didn't break any bones, he lost a good amount of skin, and needed to go to ER for stitches and wound cleaning and dressing.
I don't know that he ever chose to ride that motoboard again after that experience, as sometimes lessons learned from the school of hard knocks are the only way for some.