The notices are going up now across the MTA’s sprawling transportation network, and have been spotted inside subway cars and city buses, as well as on trains along the Long Island Rail Road, Mashable reported.
Beneath illustrations of a bright red figure riding and carrying the popular personal transporter, a message on the poster reads, “Hoverboards may be the latest fad, but they are not safe because they have the potential to catch fire.”
And to drive the point home: “No carrying, no standing, no riding – no exceptions.”
The MTA’s ban follows numerous reports in recent months of sudden hoverboard fires caused by faulty lithium-ion batteries, with the worst incidents resulting in entire homes burning to the ground.
In the past week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) revealed it’s received reports of 52 board-related fires in 24 states, while Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a recognized body that tests tech product safety, said no hoverboard had yet passed the new certification process. And in recent days, a cautious Amazon quietly removed all hoverboards from its U.S. site until the safety of the machines can be confirmed.
To ensure hoverboard owners don’t feel they’re being singled out by NY City’s transportation authority, the MTA points out that its safety rules have “long prohibited the use of personal wheeled vehicles, such as skateboards, skates or scooters, in train stations,” and also prohibit its customers from taking “hazardous or flammable materials into the public transportation network, and the lithium-ion batteries used to power hoverboards pose the risk of fire.”
And it certainly isn’t the only public transit system to say “no” to the self-balancing scooter. Amtrak, LA’s Metrolink, and Chicago’s Metra, for example, have also banned the device from their respective networks.
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