If your holiday dreams include a hoverboard, you might want to rethink that gift.
According to this report by the New York Times and CNBC, Amazon is pulling some hoverboard models from its site, because of the whole exploding into flames thing, pending a safety review.
However, a quick search shows that many models, including those from Razor, Sharper Image and Jetson, are still in stock.
To date, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has “logged 29 emergency room visits and 10 cases of fires,” according to the Hill. The federal government is now investigating how safe the boards are, especially looking into the lithium-ion batteries as the fire-starting culprit.
According to the CPSC, shoppers should be sure that any hoverboard is certified by a national test lab. If you already have one, don’t charge it overnight or leave it unattended while it’s plugged in.
Some retailers and airlines aren’t messing around and banning hoverboards outright. Overstock.com announced that the site has already pulled hoverboards. Air carriers, including Alaska Airlines, Delta, American, United and JetBlue, have banned them.
Wired reports that there is no way yet to tell if a hoverboard will or won’t catch fire, but it appears the cheaper knockoffs with cheaper batteries are more prone to burst into flame.
One of those 10 reported hoverboard fires took place at an Outlet Collection Mall in Auburn. See the video here as captured by KSN TV:
