Segway safety questioned after company owner’s death

Associated Press

LONDON

All police found at the bottom of a cliff was a man’s body in a frigid river and a Segway, the two-wheeled electric device that was supposed to revolutionize personal transport.

It was Jimi Heselden, a one-time laid-off coal miner turned self-made millionaire who had bought the Segway company only 10 months earlier. He apparently fell to his death while riding one of the sleek black-and-silver scooters. Authorities said Monday his body was found in the River Wharfe at the base of a 30-foot cliff.

Details remained sketchy — police say only that the death was not suspicious, meaning foul play is not suspected — but the incident seems certain to raise fresh questions about the safety of the Segway, which is banned on British motorways and in some U.S. cities because of safety concerns.

A witness reported seeing a man fall Sunday over a 30-foot drop into the river near the village of Boston Spa, 140 miles north of London. The remote, heavily forested area, not far from Heselden’s country estate, is popular with hikers.

A family spokesman released a statement saying the “exact circumstances of the accident are still being clarified and will, of course, be the subject of an inquest.”

Heselden, a high school dropout who went on to make a fortune developing a blast-wall system used to protect troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, never abandoned his gritty roots. He used his money to help people in the working-class area around Leeds where he grew up, earning folk- hero status there.

The 62-year-old Heselden had bought control of the Bedford, N.H.-based Segway in December.

The company’s unique two-wheeler was introduced with much fanfare in 1999 by its American founder, Dean Kamen, as a means of transport that was more protective of the environment than other scooters and automobiles. But it has also been linked to some high-profile mishaps.

President George W. Bush famously tried one out in 2003 at his family’s estate in Maine, but the machine toppled over when he tried to get on it. Celebrity journalist Piers Morgan also took a tumble on one.

Heselden’s death prompted new questions about the safety record of the battery-powered Segway, which is stabilized by gyroscopes and can travel at speeds up to 12.5 mph.