The dangers of treadmills

"Silicon Valley's Dave Goldberg died after gym accident"

"The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and SurveyMonkey chief executive Dave Goldberg died of severe head trauma, according to local officials. Mr Goldberg, 47, husband of Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, was found lying next to a gym treadmill on Friday at a holiday resort in Mexico. Mexican authorities have no plans for a criminal investigation. The officials said Goldberg still had vital signs when he was discovered, but later died at a hospital.

"He reportedly left his room in the resort near Nuevo Vallarta at 16:00 local time to exercise, and family members went to look for him when he failed to return. He was found at about 18:30 in the gym, lying by a treadmill, with a blow to the lower back of his head. It was apparent he had slipped on the treadmill and hit the machine, a spokesman for the Nayarit state prosecutor said."

When we heard this news Clare and myself broke into an animated discussion as to just how dangerous treadmills are. We were busy thinking up lethal scenarios: maybe the guy was running flat out and got tired, but couldn't get to the 'off' switch in time; perhaps he was distracted for some reason and turned, losing his balance?

One hypothesis which frankly never occurred to us was that this account of Mr Goldberg's death might actually be a tiny bit fabricated. Could the Mexican drug cartels really have had something to do with this?

(Update: I think not - it really was an unfortunate accident.)