I saw one of these just last week! It was in Rome airport and a policeman whirred past on one! As I thought they were fictional (what sort of name is Smegway?) it was highly gratifying to see it, but I'm wishing I'd pushed him off and watched him go boom...

Well, "Smegway" is a joke; the actual name is "Segway". I've only seen one, at a local brewery where they hold Friday evening "tastings". They are kinda silly, but to my knowledge don't actually go boom if you tip them over. Sadly.

Mr. "BOOM!" Jest

pretty sure Surgo is withholding the definition of smeg here....

Actually, if they'd reduce the cost to something the average person could afford they wouldn't be a bad idea, but segways are very expensive (like 4-5 thousand dollars.).

A part of me gets incredulous that they actually tried to charge that much; the other part of me is amused. They doomed the project to failure.

anyway..

Just what we need... a device that lets us burn even less calories and grow even fatter, without being efficient enough to replace the automobile.

Even better: the Megway.

Smeg is a rather crude word that doesn't need to be defined on a family forum
[EDIT] Ok, it's not REALLY a crude word, it's a fake crude word from "Red Dwarf" (which i knew) but apparently the creaters deny any relation to another word that involves genetalia and bodily fluids. Anywho...

As for segways, they were recalled a while back because idiots were tipping them too far forward and fell on their faces...and sued. The idea of the segway was that you lean forward and the gyroscopes tell it to move forward, which keeps it balanced. But stupid people with no balance fell.

I think they were redesigned but I don't know for sure. In any case, yeah, they're frigging expensive.

The big selling point of the Segway was/is that its supposedly impossible to fall off one.

Didn't stop George Bush falling off though. Although it wasnt his fault, he forgot to turn it on.

I remember seeing this behind the scenes documentary about Red Dwarf where they had some footage of the cast (Craig Charles, Robert Llewellyn, Danny Jules, and I think Chris Barrie was there too) at a convention, and someone asked them what smeg meant during a Q&A session.

Craig, Robert and Danny looked at each other comically, then dropped to their hands and knees and crawled off the stage to roars of laughter from the audience, as if to say "oh crap, not touching that one".

I'm going to repeat RhynoD here, but please bear with me as I've found out a little more info to back up what he's already said:

I think it's a shortened form of a medical term, and it's also the name of a brand of electrical appliances. Check out Wikipedia for more info.

The producers of the show have always maintained that it's a coincidence that they used "smeg" to allow swearing in a pre-watershed show (although the BBC always showed it after the TV watershed of 9pm as far as I can remember), and didn't know about the medical term.

I'm laughing at how many people are wondering what the hell it's short for. And now I'm laughing at how disgusted they'll be when they find out.

*Is curious*
*Googles*

Eew!

However, segways are good for people who have back problems and can't hike up and down hills very well (like my father).
I want to get one for my father because he's been wasting gasoline taking a two block trip in his truck to get to his work's garage before actually going to work (they did that because people were having their tires slashed.) and he can't walk the 2 blocks because it's all either up or downhill and he has major back arthritis and one leg is shorter than the other, so his hips hurt.
A segway would come in handy there. Basic mobility devices can't be run on the streets around our place because they're very rocky.

And segways do blow up if they tip over and stay that way for too long.
Kinda like those laptop batteries they had to recall 'cause they were destroying the laptops.
Lithium Ion batteries are scary.

Tastes like cheese? Gross.

Yes. Eww. I completely forgot about it.

I can't believe the wiki page has a picture.

No, looks like cheese.

Also, *laughing at people who googled/wikied it* I TOLD ya it was gross. <_<