Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall

It might be worth pointing out that the person who died is not the inventor of the Segway, that would be Dean Kamen.<p>I'm not saying that anyone claimed it was, but just pointing it out to avoid confusion.

Impressive bio:<p><i>Mr Heselden grew up in the Halton Moor area of Leeds, leaving school at 15 and working down local pits.<p>He worked as a miner before losing his job in a wave of redundancies in the 1980s.<p>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.</i>

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.<p>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.

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

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

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

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

Reading this reminded me of "I, Robot", although as unwind correctly noted, Mr. Heselden did not invent the Segway.<p>Terrible thing to happen, rest in peace.

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

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

At least it probably landed right side up....<p>:(

Tragically ironic.

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

Sounds intentional to me. If you were on a runaway scooter about to go off the cliff, you could just <i>jump off the scooter</i> back onto the ground. Sure, you'd eat some dust, but you wouldn't die in a river.<p>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.