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."

Comments

Re:The Poor Guy!

[Pojut]

Note that the inventor of the Segway is Dean Kamen. This article is about Jim Heselden, the guy that bought the Segway company.

Re:Before anyone says it:

[Anonymous Coward]

The word they shall all be looking for, is apropos.

Re:Not the inventor

[Lazareth]

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.

Inventor: yes/no.

[Slartibartfast]

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.

Re:The Poor Guy!

[mspohr]

There is some more information on the Telegraph web site: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/8027896/Millionaire-Segway-owner-dies-in-freak-accident.html

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.