Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#32Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
I think one of the Roger Moore Bond movies starts with the villian trying to kill him in remote controlled helicopter so there is definitely a precedent.
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#33Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
Would he have any enemies?
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#34I took a Segway tour in Chicago this summer. Part of the tour takes you by the water. I asked out guide if a segwayer had ever fallen in - the answer was yes, sort of. They did lose a Segway in the lake, but the user jumped off before going in herself. The worse accident they had ever had was when a guy went over the front, smashing his face, after using it incorrectly and accidentally enabled an auto-stop mechanism,…
In 2008 I had just founded a textbook-selling website, and one of the first schools we went to was University of Illinois- Urbana/Champaigne. We had a genius marketing idea: rent a Segway and ride it around campus handing out fake dollar bills that had our information on it You can see the example here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4971801/Illinois%20Heads1.jpg ). Not only could we move around campus faster, but we would stand out!
After arriving in Chicago, I went to the Segway store you mentioned. They didn't rent Segways out. Two hours later, I emerged with a $500 bill and a Segway for 7 days.
I went to Kinkos and printed out a thick cardboard front with "BrunoBooks.com" on it and taped it to the front of the Segway. I gotta say, riding those things is a LOT of fun.
Unfortunately, I underestimated how bleeping cold it is in Illinois in early January, and therefore failed to realize the implications of what I'd done. For the next week, I rode around in sub-zero temperatures handing out fliers. I'd had the choice between University of Texas and Illinois, and I'd made an unforgettable mistake.
Follow-ups to this story:
1) It didn't really work. Of 40k students, ~500 visited our site. After conversions, this was terrible for business.
2) Everything is negotiable. For the right price, you can rent anything. In a larger sense, don't take no for an answer.
3) Don't be an asshole to people handing out fliers. Usually they're just doing their job, but even if it was their idea there's no need to be a dick about it.
4) Don't ride a Segway around U of I in January.
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#35Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
I think one of the Roger Moore Bond movies starts with the villian trying to kill him in remote controlled helicopter so there is definitely a precedent.
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#36Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
Would he have any enemies?
I don't think, but those Jet Pack guys were getting awfully close...
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
None, oddly enough. He managed to get a lot of girls interested in him, though.
High school must be different nowadays...
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#38I don't want to overshadow the fact that somebody died, but I wonder how / if this will negatively affect Segway's PR.
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#39Tragically ironic.
Neither tragic nor ironic, IMO: http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-tragic-and-ironic-death-o...
The common use of tragic is more general than the literary term, and any premature death of an admired or innocent person is reasonably tragic.
This situation is arguably ironic, with a few reasonable assumptions: the Heselden believed and promoted the Segway as safe, that one motivation for his fatal final excursion was to be ready with personal experience and stories about its safe and exciting use, and so forth. "I have so much confidence in this product, I bought the company!" And now, he's also bought the farm.
Re: Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
#40It might be worth pointing out that the person who died is not the inventor of the Segway, that would be Dean Kamen. I'm not saying that anyone claimed it was, but just pointing it out to avoid confusion.
For what it's worth, he did invent (or entrepreneured, it isn't clear) the hesco bastion, which according to the former marine sitting next to me was something the troops really liked.