Getting overconfident, getting into a situation that you’re unprepared for, and wiping out. This is worsened while not wearing proper safety gear.
The Onewheel is an absolute joy to ride, even more so once you feel confident and skilled on it. The learning curve is fairly brief and starts to feel really fun the more you get the hang of it. Therein lies the problem; new riders who learn quickly will often begin pushing the board harder and faster without the technical skill on how to handle the board in all scenarios. There’s a fairly popular “Onewheel Crash” Facebook group where riders go to share their battle scars and injuries. A very common occurrence is newer riders (often with less than 100 miles) reporting their injuries and asking for feedback from the community on “what happened?”. Typically (but not always), the cause of crashes are rider error. This often stems from overconfidence and taking a bad spill. It’s easy to learn the Onewheel and feel like you’ve got it down while not realizing that there’s a decent amount training you have to give yourself to quickly respond to and maneuver hazards while riding.
A very common scenario of this occurring can be summarized by saying that its widely agreed that learning to ride the Onewheel is easy, but learning to safely fall off a Onewheel takes a lot of practice. Veteran riders will tell you to not ride the Onewheel faster than you can run until you’ve had a hundred or so miles under your belt. This is because bailing on a Onewheel requires you to “run out” the fall in order to avoid injury.
Here are some of the more common examples of situations that take new riders down:
- Unexpected pothole or bump at high speeds
- This can lead newer riders into a “death wobble” where you begin losing control of the board and inevitably fall off
- Going too fast and overpowering the “Pushback”
- This is a very common situation that new riders find themselves in when they don’t read the instructions and safety warnings!
- Not knowing how to properly dismount and having to bail out
- Master this before attempting faster speeds!
- Sudden traffic interference (car pulling out, etc.)
- Riding in residential neighborhoods, schools, parks and other areas where traffic is minimal is ideal.
Should you be worried about purchasing a Onewheel? Absolutely not, but you should definitely respect the board, the safety instructions it comes with, take learning slow, and apply a little common sense.
