
Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall - jefffoster
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-11416654
======
unwind
It 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.

~~~
idoh
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.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion>

~~~
newman314
Apparently, they even have a version that can be rapidly deployed.

Pretty impressive.

See video. <http://www.hesco.com/raid/>

~~~
phaedrus
That video is seriously cool.

~~~
newman314
Indeed, it's one of those videos that make you go "Damn, why didn't I think of
that?"

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VMG
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._

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

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antidaily
I 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, where the Segway basically shuts
off.

You have to lean forward to move forward, which makes me think this guy either
passed out or hit some rough terrain and the machine just slid off the cliff.

~~~
onwardly
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.

~~~
mayank
> 4) Don't ride a Segway around U of I in January.

I'm so very sorry for you! Didn't it ring a bell for anyone where you work
that outdoors + Chicago area + January = frostbite? No wonder the place rented
you a Segway! You don't see a lot of Segway tours in January (or people
outdoors if they don't have to be).

~~~
onwardly
It was my idea to go there and Segway it up. We chose the U of I for reasons
other than the weather, and being from the south it just didn't occur to me
that cold + Segway riding = really really cold.

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aberkowitz
I don't want to overshadow the fact that somebody died, but I wonder how / if
this will negatively affect Segway's PR.

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ck2
Very sad to read, especially with those huge donations to charity he gave.

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peteri
Probably more importantly isn't the segway but hesco bastion
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up-ozEcAX8k> Saved lots of lives.

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mjijackson
So awesome that his contributions to charity play such a prominent part in the
article announcing his death. A life well spent.

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ihumanable
Reading this reminded me of "I, Robot", although as unwind correctly noted,
Mr. Heselden did not invent the Segway.

Terrible thing to happen, rest in peace.

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ww520
Can a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?

~~~
redstripe
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.

~~~
graywh
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Your_Eyes_Only_(film)>

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kasharoo
It's what I've always said--cliffs don't kill people, people driving Segways
off cliffs kill people.

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zacharycohn
At least it probably landed right side up....

:(

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MalcUK
Tragically ironic.

~~~
raganwald
Neither tragic nor ironic, IMO:

[http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-tragic-and-ironic-
death-o...](http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-tragic-and-ironic-death-of-mr-
heselden)

~~~
gojomo
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.

~~~
raganwald
I'm familiar with the common use, and even there I demur. He was a mature man
who was using and adventure model segway to travel off-road. Death by
misadventure may be statistically unlikely, but it is not unexpected.
Furthermore, in his life he was able to accomplish a great deal, and while he
may have gone on to accomplish even more, I trust that we can look at his life
without a massive sense of what-might-have-been.

Compare and contrast to the "tragic" death of Jimmy Blanton, Duke Ellington's
bassist for just two years. Blanton is credited (or blamed if you prefer) with
inventing the Bass Solo, but at age 23 he died of tuberculosis. Thus, the
world was deprived of the bulk of his career and looking at his short life one
wonders what Jazz might have been like had he played for five decades like Ray
Brown, a man he inspired.

The tragedy of Blanton's death was that it was significantly premature.
Naturally the bereaved think that Mr. Heselden's death was also premature, but
we must draw a line somewhere, otherwise _every_ death is tragic and the word
means nothing at all.

So Blaton's death was tragic in comparison because of how premature it was and
how much of his productive genius was lost. That being said, the cause of
Jimmy Blanton's death was not extraordinary given the health issues affecting
many from his social class at the time.

This is different than Scott LaFaro, another pioneering Jazz Bassist who died
"tragically," however Scott's death was in an automobile accident, an
unexpected incident. Scott's career was cut short and it was cut short in an
unexpected fashion, another mark of a "tragedy" in the sense you promote. Mr.
Heselden's death was anything but unexpected. If a man sets out to seek
adventure in wild places, he and everyone around him must accept the risk that
he will not survive.

If I am to die while Scuba diving, could we really call that a tragedy? What
caprice of fate can we blame for a man who is killed when he deliberately
immerses himself in an environment hostile to air-breathing life?

This watered-down use of the word "tragic" no longer carries much meaning, if
any. I get that it's the style (especially in America) to say that since
English is a "living language," it is defined by whatever meaning the vox
populi care to give it. But while I respect your point that there's more than
one way to use the word, I feel that even this lesser meaning does not apply
to a mature, accomplished businessman who died while knowingly engaging in a
risky activity.

------
speby
Interesting article. I wonder if the guy who invented the bicycle ever had an
accident. Was it newsworthy?

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cookiecaper
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.

~~~
dandrews
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 still planted a facer last month (my own
fault, not the seg's). All I can say is that it's a good damn thing _I_ don't
live on a cliff.

~~~
msisk6
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.

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

So, what was his weekly wedgie average?

~~~
msisk6
None, oddly enough. He managed to get a lot of girls interested in him,
though.

High school must be different nowadays...

