From Technology Review…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thieves used to break into as many as five cars a week in the parking garage at Los Angeles’ Union Station. Then the Metropolitan Transportation Authority came up with a simple solution: They put a security officer on a Segway Human Transporter. ”The first day that one of the security officers was on the device was pretty much the last day there was a break-in,” said Robin Blair, a transportation planning manager for the MTA, which owns about 19 Segways.

Although the electric, self-balancing Segway scooter never quite caught on with commuters the way its backers had predicted five years ago, the gizmo has found a growing market among law-enforcement agencies, with more than 100 departments around the world now signed on as customers and many others testing the device. The niche market, coupled with a burst of interest from Europeans struggling with gas prices much higher than in the U.S., have breathed new life into the Segway…