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Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall
- MalcUK 16y agoTragically ironic.
- siglesias 16y agoI think this fact might better go unsaid.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- c00ki3s 16y agoHe's dead, he won't mind.
- pclark 16y agoironic in what sense?
- grannyg00se 16y agoIn 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)
- thought_alarm 16y agoHe was killed by the very thing that was trying to kill him.
- raganwald 16y agoNeither tragic nor ironic, IMO: http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-tragic-and-ironic-death-of-mr-heselden http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-tragic-and-ironic-death-o...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gojomo 16y agoThe 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 16y agoI'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.
- unwind 16y agoIt 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.
- siruva07 16y agothanks for that clarification. i was ironically reminded of other inventors killed by their inventions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_their_own_inventions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventors_killed_by_the...). still so very tragic.
- idoh 16y agoFor 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion
- stinkytaco 16y agoWe used HESCOs (Concertainer) in Fargo for flood control a couple of years ago. Not the perfect solution, but there's no way we would have been able to get up that much flood barrier in so little time without them. It's one of those inventions that's so simple you wonder why it didn't already exist.
- newman314 16y agoApparently, they even have a version that can be rapidly deployed. Pretty impressive. See video. http://www.hesco.com/raid/ http://www.hesco.com/raid/
- phaedrus 16y agoThat video is seriously cool.
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- cookiecaper 16y agoSounds 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.
- darklajid 16y agoWe cannot know for sure. One commenter over on the article site brings up the point of a heart attack while driving. Would (just like in any other vehicle, granted) cause a loss of control and might explain a great deal. But again - we cannot know and shouldn't judge without more details, imo.
- cookiecaper 16y agoYou're right of course, that's a possibility. I don't mean to be passing absolute judgment on the matter. Just saying there's got to be something more than "I accidentally drove off a cliff, sry", as the article seems to imply. I don't really understand why I'm losing karma at such a clip for it. :(
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tomjen3 16y agoI realize that showing respect for the death is usually a custom, but wouldn't it be better to show respect for the living?
- glhaynes 16y agoI don't see why there does have to be more to it. People make mistakes while driving vehicles all the time. How many of the recent Toyota crashes were caused by people stepping on the gas when they meant to step on the brake?
- 16y ago
- ihumanable 16y agoReading 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.
- VMG 16y agoImpressive 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 16y agoWow, that really brings it home to me, as I live just a few streets away from Halton Moor...
- ck2 16y agoVery sad to read, especially with those huge donations to charity he gave.
- antidaily 16y agoI 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 16y agoIn 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 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 16y ago> 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).
- peteri 16y agoProbably more importantly isn't the segway but hesco bastion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up-ozEcAX8k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up-ozEcAX8k Saved lots of lives.
- speby 16y agoInteresting article. I wonder if the guy who invented the bicycle ever had an accident. Was it newsworthy?
- zacharycohn 16y agoAt least it probably landed right side up.... :(
- mjijackson 16y agoSo awesome that his contributions to charity play such a prominent part in the article announcing his death. A life well spent.
- ww520 16y agoCan a Segway be remotely controled? Could there be foul play in this case?
- redstripe 16y agoI 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 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Your_Eyes_Only_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Your_Eyes_Only_(film)
- henning 16y agoWould he have any enemies?
- nickpinkston 16y agoI don't think, but those Jet Pack guys were getting awfully close... http://www.martinjetpack.com/ http://www.martinjetpack.com/
- aberkowitz 16y agoI don't want to overshadow the fact that somebody died, but I wonder how / if this will negatively affect Segway's PR.
- kasharoo 16y agoIt's what I've always said--cliffs don't kill people, people driving Segways off cliffs kill people.