Segway Scoots an Officer Right Off of It Yet Again

Maybe it's time for Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to give up on putting his police force on Segways once and for all. A 12-year NYPD vet is suing after he was forced into early retirement by a nasty injury that occurred while he was leading the department's Segway training sessions at Floyd Bennett Field last year.

Officer Gary Schneider says a software glitch caused one of the wheels to seize and tossed him from the scooter, breaking his leg so severely that it needed surgery with a rod and six screws in order to heal. "I definitely don't consider it safe," Schneider told the NY Post. His lawyer added, "If they continue to give New York's Finest Segways, then they should get hazard pay. They're going to see a lot of cops get injured."

Kelly had just reinstituted a Segway program after the failure of a 2003 trial that ended with officers getting tossed off the vehicles when the the batteries would suddenly die.