Another death by DOT Bush-hog

[MoKelly]

Why aren't the operators required to walk the area first before they mow? I would assume a bowling ball sized rock would have been noticed.

Is it considered too time consuming or is the grass allowed to grow so high before mowing that big stuff just can't be seen unless you stepped on it while walking?

MoKelly

 

[aczlan]

Why aren't the operators required to walk the area first before they mow? I would assume a bowling ball sized rock would have been noticed.
Is it considered too time consuming or is the grass allowed to grow so high before mowing that big stuff just can't be seen unless you stepped on it while walking?

FWJ could probably answer this better, but as I understand it, they are mowing literally miles of median and they generally mow 1-3 times per year, so the grass is waist high when they mow and you could not see anything even if you walked it.

Aaron Z

 

[slowzuki]

Quite literally impossible to walk all that and the rocks would still be missed. Mowing slower, and watching every square inch going into my hay mower I still managed to run over a fawn last year.

I'm not sure what the answer is, I read some place uses flocks of sheep etc along the roads to keep it trimmed down.

Why aren't the operators required to walk the area first before they mow? I would assume a bowling ball sized rock would have been noticed.

Is it considered too time consuming or is the grass allowed to grow so high before mowing that big stuff just can't be seen unless you stepped on it while walking?

MoKelly

 

[B E Lewis Farms]

Hey guys, Here is a little input from my own personal knowledge. Keep in mind that as I am writing this I am running a guardrail mower on interstate 95 in central North Carolina at a blazing speed of 0.4 mph.
I am an employee of the NCDOT, up until this year I was a supervisor for a mowing crew in one half of the county I work in. My county is part of two county district that has gone 100% contract for routine mowing. We had our own tractors for mowing secondary roads and had all primary roads contract mowed. We would cut on an average 15-20 miles power tractor per day (8hr) on a 6 week cycle that makes which makes it impossible to walk all of it but questionable ares are walked. Even though we have to keep alert for traffic and foreign objects things do get hit and thrown thorough the chain guards and accidents do occur.
Back to work

 

[crazyal]

When this is all said and done, and the lawyers are through, they would have been able to afford 100's of flails.

The lawyers are salivating. Its a slam dunk considering they had a history of essentially this exact accident happening. The fact that the state didnt change their practice to something "safer" makes them even more liable. They didnt learn from the first death (or even the others in other jurisdictions).

Personally i hope theyre reamed over this. It could have been anyone just driving by who lost their life as a result of their negligence. Not like their bush hogging in a field where you can control access, this was beside an active highway.

I bet they don't get that much. To win in court they will have to show that the DOT was using the mower in an unsafe manor. Just because an accident happened you automatically don't get money. It'll most likely get settled out of court as most DOT agencies across the country have great records of maintenance and putting equipment out of service if damaged.

 

[Scooby074]

I bet they don't get that much. To win in court they will have to show that the DOT was using the mower in an unsafe manor. Just because an accident happened you automatically don't get money. It'll most likely get settled out of court as most DOT agencies across the country have great records of maintenance and putting equipment out of service if damaged.

I think the argument here is a past history of bush hogs throwing rocks and killing people and there being a safer alternative.

Dont have to look further than the Ryobi tablesaw lawsuit. Schools and many businesses threw out perfectly good tablesaws because the Sawstop was a safer alternative. Continuing to use a traditional saw left them much more open to lawsuit if someone got hurt. Theres a responsibility on the user to mitigate risk, especially to uneducated bystanders who may not understand the danger.

 

[boggen]

one thing i hate doing. doesn't matter what type of mower, (push, self propelled, riding lawn mower, belly mower rear 3pt hitch mower, pull behind mower, finishing mowers, rottory cutter mowers, fail mowers, etc.. etc.. etc...)

i have seen way to many things go flying out from under them. windows in house broken, windows in vehicle broken, dents in vehicles and siding. distances and how fast some of the bigger objects go. compared to smaller objects ((tend to see larger objects go further / faster / and leave more damage both what they hit and damage to blades of the mower))

*hhmmmss getting back on track*
is mowing along the road side. and the exit chute of the mower deck is facing the road way. i do my best to always push in a clutch or something to stop the blades from spinning. i never fails i normally always hit something (rock, part of a glass bear bottle, tree limb, something) mowing a ditch and something goes flying. and this only say 700 to 1000 feet length of road side.

i tend to wave to people when i see them out there on there riding lawn mower, regardless if i know them or not. generally i see most folks go for there clutch or something to stop and wave back to me. friendly short moment, that keeps everyone safe.

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getting back to this thread. if you have never went roadside and collected trash, or aluminum bear cans mostly. you should. it is rather frightfull experience at times. more so on out of town roads. were there are woods and like right up next to the road were no one really lives to clean things up. just piles and piles of trash at times. and actually kinda amazed there not more stories of this nature.

in a way i am actually kinda surprised there is not "large" huge size vacuum trucks that just go along road sides and clean up the ditches.

===================
as far as safer alternative. fail mowers have there spot. yes, but remember having a driver licenses has its own privileges. seeing a mower out and hopefully seeing "caution mowing ahead sign* should have been up before folks come up on someone from a given government body mowing a road side. it means possible danger. not of you hitting tractor or tractor hitting you. but things flying out of the mowing contraption, making it rotory cutter, fail, to other type of mower.

i am sure most government bodies that do "plowing" of snow. have a dedicated budge set aside each winter for "mail boxes" taken out.

==================
tossing it as an accident. that no one could control. very sad, but there is only so much we can do.

 

[jonyyuma]

Alternative, some of the loops and right-of-ways here are planted in wildflower refuges, and there is no mowing??

 

[Gator6x4]

I bet they don't get that much. To win in court they will have to show that the DOT was using the mower in an unsafe manor. Just because an accident happened you automatically don't get money. It'll most likely get settled out of court as most DOT agencies across the country have great records of maintenance and putting equipment out of service if damaged.

Since most states due to budget constraints now use Private Contractors for such mowing (Low Bidder) wins contract. Suing in all likelihood expecting to receive monetary compensation is not going to produce desirable results. Most Right Of Way Mowers only carry the required minimum of insurance. Most are incorporated and file for Bankruptcy when sued. They then change the Company name, file incorporation papers and are mowing again in a couple of weeks.

 

[mooseracing]

Were there chine guards front and back?

Doesn't help heavy items. I worked for the road commission mowing for awhile. You mow so much random **** and things like tires and rocks will fly depending on the size of rock that is.

Why aren't the operators required to walk the area first before they mow? I would assume a bowling ball sized rock would have been noticed.

Is it considered too time consuming or is the grass allowed to grow so high before mowing that big stuff just can't be seen unless you stepped on it while walking?

MoKelly

:laughing: First cutting, grass has been taller than our 60hp tractors with cab, we're talking 10ft no problems. Crawling in 1st low sometimes you even have to slow down. Not to mention we were spending 3 months a year mowing 10hrs a day. There is no way to walk all that. Also first cutting is as soon as we can get to it in May, DNR in MI sets a date that won't destroy birds and such, we can't by law cut earlier.



From my experience at the road commission the flails do not do as good of job on first cutting plus all the brush/trees that gets in the ROW. There is no comparison to the amount of work a brush chopper can do in a day compared to a flail. Also you are constantly hitting things, I can change a set of blades in under 10 minutes, we would have to have a few extra flail setups sitting around to get around the changing of hammers and down time.