Accidents Archive

Segway Company Owner Dead, by Segway

September 27th, 2010. By AbiK

Ok, this one is rife with irony. The type I don’t like writing about. It seems that Jimi Heselden, the man who only recently bought the Segway scooter company—you know, those odd-looking stand-on motorized scooters that look a bit like a pogo stick on wheels—has died. And here’s the eerily ironic part: as a result of driving his Segway scooter over a cliff and into a river.

Now, the cliff was not the great White Cliffs of Dover (approx. 350 ft. high), but a smaller “cliff” that’s located near Jimi Heselden’s estate at West Yorkshire in Boston Spa—for those of you who are wondering where that is, it’s about a three-and-a-half hour ride north of London in the English countryside. And it’s reported at dailymail.co.uk that the drop was about thirty feet from a rocky path–the picture shown there looks more sloping and wooded in nature than a sheer drop. I bring up the nature of the nature (ie, the cliff) not to diminish the severity of the fall, but to draw attention to the fact that a Segway may not be the best vehicle for handling rougher terrain–and clearly there are risks involved in riding a Segway.

The Segway scooter is driven standing up; the driver leans to control the direction it’s going in. And a gyroscope mechanism keeps the scooter upright. The video above gives a sense of not only the contraption itself, but how it must feel to drive one (I haven’t; I also have no desire to).

So according to reports thus far, it hasn’t yet been determined whether Heselden’s death-by-Segway was actually due to a defective Segway, or due to driver error.

Either way, what is known, is that Jimi Heselden was quite a philanthropist who will be missed by many. According to the dailymail, Heselden had given £23 million (over $36 million) to a charity foundation—the Leeds Community Foundation—he set up in 2008. “The organisation helps disadvantaged youngsters, vulnerable elderly people and health improvement projects in the south and east of the city.”

Tags: Jimi Heselden, Segway, Segway death
Posted in Accidents, Defective Products, Emerging Issues | 5075No Comments »Segway+Company+Owner+Dead%2C+by+Segway2010-09-27+18%3A22%3A27AbiK

Where were all the ‘Safety Nets’ at Amusement Park?

August 4th, 2010. By LucyC

Never a fan of amusement park rides—including the Ferris Wheel—I read about this story with a stomach churning sense of foreboding. On July 31, 12-year old Teagan Marti fell more than 100 feet in Extreme World Amusement Park’s Terminal Velocity ‘ride’ and landed on concrete because the safety net was not in place.

Remarkably, she survived. She is in the hospital in Wisconsin, the state where the amusement park is located, in critical but stable condition. She has 10 fractures in her back and one in her skull. Her father, who is a radiologist, performed CPR on her at the scene to bring her back to life.

Dr. Alex Marti, was the first to see his daughter after her fall. During an appearance on CBS’ The Early Show on August 2, he said “She was dead….She was basically unconscious, not moving and laying flat on her back with blood coming out of her ears and nose. Just a horrible, horrible scene. At the moment she fell and I heard that loud thud, I just assumed she was dead.”

This is everyone’s worst amusement park nightmare—the unimaginable. Why? Because you place your trust in the amusement park staff, experts, ride designers, maintenance people and God—whichever god you like—that everything has been done properly, and your safety is not at issue. Because to actually imagine what happened to Teagan is hard to do. At some point your brain kicks in and says “no—this is ridiculous—it will never happen.” As Teagan’s father put it, after having watched several people do the ‘ride’ before his daughter, “To me, it’s just impossible to imagine that something like that could happen.”

But it did. So now the debate begins—who’s at fault? At a minimum this constitutes negligence resulting in personal injury—it could have been wrongful death. Do waivers hold in these types of circumstances? An interesting point in this situation is that Teagan is 12, yet the legal age to take this ‘ride’ is 14. According to a report on CBS News, Teagan’s parents signed a consent so she could do the Terminal Velocity ride, which incidentally is intended to send you hurtling through space at 52 miles per hour— having been dropped from a barrel 100 feet above the ground–see the video above.

The fellow who let Teagan go—the man at the top of the ride—is not at work at the moment “for mental health reasons.” I would think so. But the park has also been closed as an investigation takes place.

The attorney representing Teagan apparently believes it is this man’s fault because he didn’t check to see if the safety net was in place before he let the young girl go. But I can’t help wondering why there wasn’t a back-up safety net? What would that cost to install? Next to nothing, compared with the alternatives, I’m willing to bet. And what about procedures? Were there any in place that this man had to follow before letting Teagan go? If there weren’t, how can he be solely responsible? Teagan’s attorney told CBS that there was no failsafe method, no back-up. And he makes the point that the fact that a rider could be released prematurely demonstrates a design defect. If this had been a defective product like a car that had caused an accident, people would not hesitate in placing the blame on the manufacturers and designers, and rightfully so. Therefore, while the man who let Teagan go may have played a decisive role in this horrible accident, I don’t see how he can be held entirely to blame.

I’m also left wondering who oversees amusement park safety? CBS news reports the “US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that more than 270 million people visit American amusement parks each year. About 7,000 are treated in emergency rooms for injuries from ride accidents. An average of four people die.”

Consequently the experts advise you not to assume all rides are safe. Ride safety expert Ken Martin told CBS News, “Watch the ride, ask questions, make sure the ride operator is paying attention. Make sure other rides are behaving themselves.” That’s exactly what Teagan’s father did.

So, if you can’t assume all rides are safe—in what instance is it safe to go on one?

Tags: Amusement Ride, Extreme World, Teagan Marti, Terminal Velocity, Wisconsin
Posted in Accidents, Emerging Issues, Personal Injury | 46083 Comments »2010-08-04+13%3A20%3A35LucyC

With where Cars are Heading, my Money’s Going in Funeral Homes

May 21st, 2010. By Hunter West

chrysler dashboard With where Cars are Heading, my Moneys Going in Funeral Homes I love to drive—but I just may have to give it up and be done with it. Because I don’t like where the cars of the future are going.

For that matter, I don’t like where they are now.

A recent article in The New York Times focused on the cars of the future and what our dashboards are going to look like. Specifically, a demonstration by Cisco Systems showed how an LED dashboard display can be manipulated and customized much like the screen on your smart phone, iPad or laptop.

In other words, if you don’t like the fuel gauge over HERE, you can drag and drop it over THERE.

Same with the icons for the car’s web browser, the weather channel, the stocks channel, the news feed, the video screen, the keyboard and the GPS.

Here’s the problem…

It’s one thing to have the dashboard evolve from a collection of mechanical dials to integrated electronic bars, and graphs. This gee-whiz stuff has been happening since the 1980′s.

The problem—and I’ll say it again—is all the interconnectivity that automotive manufacturers have, or are bringing into the car.

Were cars to have the capacity to drive themselves, then I’d be all for it. Just like the cockpit of an airliner, where you can throw the multi-million-dollar jet on autopilot and play with your laptop while the plane overshoots the airport by an hour…

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not so good, either.

The point is, even if cars were to have the kind of sophistication that commercial jets have, Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Automobile, Automotive, Cars, Cisco, LED Dashboard, Smart Car
Posted in Accidents, Automotive, Defective Products | 3689No Comments »2010-05-21+14%3A15%3A51Hunter+West

Lawyer to Discuss Defective Car Seats on FOX 11 Ten O’Clock News LA

May 19th, 2010. By AbiK

Given all the news over the past few months about sticking accelerator pedals, floor mat problems or defective brakes, it’s easy to see how an issue like defective car seats can get lost in the mix. And, in truth, you don’t hear about defective car seat stories too often in the news. Sadly though, it appears to be a growing problem and when there is a car accident involving a defective car seat, it’s often with fatal results.

chase brian Lawyer to Discuss Defective Car Seats on FOX 11 Ten OClock News LA Attorney Brian Chase is scheduled to appear on FOX 11 Ten O’Clock News Los Angeles at 10:00 pm tomorrow night (Thursday, May 20) as part of a special report on the issue. Chase’s firm, Bisnar Chase, has handled defective car seat lawsuits and Chase will discuss two of these cases.

One case involves a woman who sustained catastrophic injuries that rendered her quadriplegic due to a defective seat. The other case involves a woman whose seven-year-old daughter was killed as the result of a defective seat that careened backwards, crushing the child’s chest and causing her to sustain fatal injuries.

Chase is also set to discuss what’s described as ”an inadequate, 40-year seat manufacturing standard that provides pathetic occupant protection in rear-end collisions—a standard that desperately needs changed.” What’s more, he’ll speak about side-by-side crash tests that prove more rigid seat designs would offer significantly better occupant protection than “soft” designs currently being manufactured by a majority of today’s automakers.

Tags: Bisnar Chase, Brian Chase, Defective Car Seats, Fox News
Posted in Accidents, Automotive, Defective Products | 36771 Comment »2010-05-19+21%3A46%3A58AbiK

Mmmaybe not…BP up for Safety Award, Ceremony Quietly Postponed

May 7th, 2010. By Hunter West

podium Mmmaybe not...BP up for Safety Award, Ceremony Quietly Postponed If it wasn’t so tragic—with loss of life and the almost certain environmental threat—the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon would have taken on a completely unexpected spin with an irony so delicious you could taste it.

Instead, it’s just sad.

That’s because BP, the multinational oil company that had leased the Deepwater Horizon and is now scrambling to stem the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, was a favorite to win an environmental award last Monday that celebrated the safety and efficiency of the offshore drilling industry.

Needless to say, in the wake of the ongoing crisis, that ceremony was quietly postponed.

Somebody is thinking at the federal Minerals Management Service, the sponsor of the awards. Whomever handles their public relations over there deserves a raise in pay and a pat on the back, as going through with the ceremony in light of what has happened would be a gaffe of major proportions capable of reverberating around the world.

Can you imagine? Everybody from Jon Stewart to Jay Leno would be all over it. If people are already saddened and angered over the accident and the environmental impact, such an ill-advised decision to forge ahead with a self-serving glad-fest would leave the rest of us seeing red as we watch the Gulf of Mexico turn brown, as Mother Earth bleeds green.

Make no mistake, in any other scenario and at any other time the annual Industry SAFE Awards would be—and is—an important incentive for an industry that plays with fire as far as the Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: BP Oil Spill, Deepwater Horizon, Environmental Damage, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Drilling, Oil Spill
Posted in Accidents, Emerging Issues, Environment | 35594 Comments »2010-05-07+19%3A29%3A34Hunter+West