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Segway UK Boss Dies After Driving Off Cliff
necro81 writes "Jimi Heselden, the British multi-millionaire defense contractor and philanthropist, who bought the Segway company last December from inventor Dean Kamen, died yesterday after an accident while riding one of the machines. While using a ruggedized X2 version of the two-wheeled balancing scooter at his estate in North Yorkshire, he apparently drove over the edge of a precipice and into the River Wharfe. He was found later by a passerby and declared dead on the scene."
Note that the inventor of the Segway is Dean Kamen. This article is about Jim Heselden, the guy that bought the Segway company.
Living With a Nerd
I initially didn't care much -- they call him a "defence contractor". But it seems he made his money from selling crates of earth to use in actual defences, rather than the rest of the "defence contractors" who make guns and bombs, and should really be called "offence contractors".
The word they shall all be looking for, is apropos.
So what's the point? Blame (ban?) the Segway?
And, oh, by the way:
In the UK, it is illegal to drive a Segway on the road or even on pavements or cycle paths. They can only be used on private property, despite campaigns to let them be used on cycle paths.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Hi. This is ironic and certainly contrary to what was expected. I don't see how you can claim otherwise.
I buy the rights to a product. I intend to manufacture it and have it make me wealthy. Instead it kills me. This is irony.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Did you check your facts before you opened up the floodgates of your arse? The guy may have been a defence contractor, but his company made FORTIFICATIONS. Not in the sense of point-defence systems, but in the sense of freaking walls.
The Personal Transporter's *actual* inventor is this engineer I've bumped into -- I work with his brother. DK was "merely" the person who put money and PR behind it. Dean gets a lot of credit -- but really, *his* biggest invention was the insulin pump.
It appears that he was a miner who received a redundancy payment and used it to start a business making wire cages that were filled with earth to stabilize canal banks. The military found these useful for building blast walls in Iraq and bought a bunch of them. I'm sure he did well as a military contractor but that was not his business.
Sad for the family.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?