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Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

#23

Post by grannyg00se »

pclark wrote: post #15
MalcUK wrote: post #2

Tragically ironic.

ironic in what sense?

In the sense that he recently bought a company whose product ended up contributing to his sudden death. Perhaps not truly ironic in the literary sense according to raganwald, but I believe most people would consider that to be ironic.

(Alanis Morissette certainly would agree judging by her definition of what qualifies as irony)

Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

#24

Post by msisk6 »

dandrews wrote: post #17
cookiecaper wrote: post #4

Sounds intentional to me. If you were on a runaway scooter about to go off the cliff, you could just jump off the scooter back onto the ground. Sure, you'd eat some dust, but you wouldn't die in a river. It seems like it'd be pretty hard _not_ to do this even if you were trying not to do it. Something is definitely fishy here.

You can't infer anything "intentional" here. I imagine he was close to the edge and he let it get away from him for whatever reason. Maybe he slipped in some loose gravel or mud, or his dog blocked one of the wheels, or he simply wasn't paying attention. Those machines are deceptively easy to operate, but they are still machines and you pay dearly for your complacency. I have 5000+ miles experience on mine, and I sti…

I have a Segway. I actually got it for my son and he rode it to school his senior year in high school and had a great time with it (he even got in the Wall Street Journal because of it).

After he got a girlfriend he was more interested in a car so I took the Segway to work and we had a lot of fun ridding it around the office.

After about a month or so, after the novelty had worn off, our CTO was riding it around when he had an accident. He was getting off it but left one foot on the platform and accidentally twisted the handle bar to one side. The Segway took off in a circle throwing him to the ground, nearly throwing him through a plate glass window and running over him.

Your reaction if you get off the thing wrong and it keeps going is to grab it by the handle and try to stop it. But it's heavy, the handlebar is the controller, and it has a lot of torque.

I don't think it's more dangerous than anything else (like a bicycle), but it works in a way that's different than anything else and after a while you get complacent only to get bitten by it.

Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

#25

Post by thehodge »

VMG wrote: post #9

Impressive bio: Mr Heselden grew up in the Halton Moor area of Leeds, leaving school at 15 and working down local pits. He worked as a miner before losing his job in a wave of redundancies in the 1980s. His engineering business went from strength-to-strength and he had a fortune reported to be £166m, making him one of the top 400 richest people on the UK.

Wow, that really brings it home to me, as I live just a few streets away from Halton Moor...

Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

#28

Post by joey_bananas »

msisk6 wrote: post #24
dandrews wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't infer anything "intentional" here. I imagine he was close to the edge and he let it get away from him for whatever reason. Maybe he slipped in some loose gravel or mud, or his dog blocked one of the wheels, or he simply wasn't paying attention. Those machines are deceptively easy to operate, but they are still machines and you pay dearly for your complacency. I have 5000+ miles experience on mine, and I sti…

I have a Segway. I actually got it for my son and he rode it to school his senior year in high school and had a great time with it (he even got in the Wall Street Journal because of it). After he got a girlfriend he was more interested in a car so I took the Segway to work and we had a lot of fun ridding it around the office. After about a month or so, after the novelty had worn off, our CTO was riding it around when…

> got it for my son and he rode it to school his senior year in high school

So, what was his weekly wedgie average?

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