Potential Winner of a Darwin Award? – 27 September 2010

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek ‘honour’, given to people who “do a service to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool”. This means, in short, idiots who lose the ability to reproduce – most commonly by dying.

Previous winners have included a juggler (who juggled live hand grenades), a man who filmed skydivers (who jumped out of the plane without a parachute), and someone who tried to prove that a window was unbreakable (it wasn’t – he crashed through it and fell to his death).

But you may be thinking ‘Ah, this is all very well, but why’s there a picture of a very young Andrew on a Segway?’ Let me explain.

Yesterday, Jimi Heselden (the owner of the UK division of Segway®) was found dead in the River Wharfe in Yorkshire. Sad as this is, with him was a “Segway-type” vehicle. It is believed, therefore, that he rode the scooter off a cliff, and fell into the river.

Further details are not yet clear. It is unsure whether it was suicide or an accident. His family have asked for privacy at this time.

External:

The Darwin Awards – Official Website

The Darwin Awards – Wikipedia Entry

Segway boss Jimi Heselden dies in scooter cliff fall – BBC News Report