I was involved a few years back with a company that manufactured mobility scooters and a friend of mine developed the speed control system for these wee beasties.
To put it simply, when these scooters went out to the public we set all the power controls to ½ ie speed to ½, torque to ½, I.R correction to ½ etc, etc. with this setting they were easily capable of pulling aircraft out of hangers and that was where we sold a lot of the evil little bastards.
Anyway one Friday we got on the piss at the factory where they were made and needless to say, boys being boys, eventually (read: when completely liquored) we got one of the scooters that was waiting to be dispatched out and cranked all the controls to max.
The chap who owned the business was a lovely old guy Called Don. Now Don was no spring chicken at 75 and by no means a fly-weight at about 100 and some odd kilograms but bolstered by the numerous beers he’d managed to slip under his belt he felt it was his responsibility, nay – duty, to test out the ability of his product in “Hyper Mode”.
Behind the factory was a substantially steep incline, comprised mostly of loose clay, scrub and gorse. He started out well. Approaching cautiously and picking a good line.
But not to be denied our fair share of blood we stood below shouting entirely sensible advice and encouragement like “feed it the fat you old fool”, “give it some you poofta” and “give us a go and I’ll show you how it’s done you wanker”, you know, good kiwi stuff. Well poor old Don finally bows to increasing pressure and at three quarters of the way up the bank (a good twenty five feet above us) throws the throttle wide open.
Well, bugger me sideways, the infernal contraption stood up on its back wheels, throwing Don from his perch and into a 15 foot free fall almost to the bottom of the hill where he came to a tangled, twisted stop, and in his unconscious state - started snoring!
Not to be put off by having lost its pilot the wretched machine, still at the top of the hill, flipped over itself and proceeded to roll end over end back down the hill smashing the throttle lever on one particularly spectacular bounce. It finally came to rest on top of the long suffering and unconscious Don with the back wheels spinning at a fierce rate. The demon machine then took a firm grip on poor Don’s trousers and tore over the top of his unconscious form to go careering into the back wall of the factory where thankfully, it dissembled itself with a ferocious bang.
Don as it turned out suffered a moderate concussion, a broken arm, two broken ribs a torn scrotum and had all but four teeth in his top plate ripped out by the scooter running over him, the torn scrotum came from the high speed wheel tearing up his trousers while he was unconscious on the ground. Of course being that we were unaware of the extent of Don’s injuries we spent quite awhile rolling around on the ground pissing ourselves before we realized that he hadn’t moved.
Suffice to say, Don developed a renewed sense of respect for his machines, unfortunately - I can’t say he felt the same way about us.
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