Fingers Lost To Lawnmower

[Transit]

A few years ago, a Princeton student lost a arm and sued the railroad. The judge through the case out.
The train is parked in a fenced off area, with signs posted, "No trespassing", "Danger-High Voltage".
One must climb 15 feet to get to the top of the car, and there are sings around the equipment, "Danger-High Voltage 25,000 volts"

The judge asked, what school do you attend? Princeton.
Is it difficult to get into Princeton? Yes, you must be intelligent.
Can you read? Of course.
Why did you climb a fence, ignoring all the warning signs and touch a 25,000-volt power line?

 

[Willl]

Darwin.

 

[Bird]

With the exception of age related or mental issues, there is no way to explain away STICKING YOUR HAND UNDER A RUNNING MOWER.

I mean, really, to any rational person, is there any question what would happen when you do this? It's akin to forgetting to point a gun downrange and shooting yourself in the head. It's not one of those "ooops, I missed my turn" type of things or getting your fingers pinched because you absentmindedly put your hand somewhere. Anyone who doesn't understand what will happen when you stick your hand under a running mower should probably not be trusted to care for themselves, or we should stop protecting them and let nature run it's course and put a bit of bleach in the gene pool.

The flip side of this is if we was truly suffering from age related dementia or similar to a degree that common sense things like this are gone, he should not be left alone or unsupervised. Just like a small child. I don't say this to degrade him, but more than likely, all of us will reach this point and will need someone to care for us at some level.

I find it hard to believe that nobody noticed that his common sense was gone to a degree that he would do something like this. In that case, THEY are at fault for this happening.

If it was a 2 or 3 year old child that reached under a running mower while the parent/operator was not paying attention, everyone would be all over that parent/operator for not protecting the child. Same applies here, if that is the case.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I know we all make mistakes. About 35 years ago, one Saturday my lawn very badly needed mowing and I had the flu and was very, very sick. But I got out there and mowed it anyway and was using a side charge bagger. This was before the days of the interlocks that shut mowers off or stop the blade when you turn loose of the handle. So I stopped to dump the grass catcher without killing the engine, and the discharge chute was plugged. Now I was just sure I knew where the blade came to and I wasn't going to reach that deep into the chute. But sure enough, the blade hit my right thumb. I had on heavy leather work gloves that day and it didn't cut me at all; just hit the end of the thumb hard enough to make it bleed all around the thumbnail with no cuts.

That thumb throbbed for a couple of days and the following Monday I had to go to the doctor anyway for the flu so he x-rayed the thumb and found no problem; said he expected a lengthwise shattering of the bone.

So, yes, it was stupid of me and I'll probably never do anything like that again, but maybe because of some of the mistakes I've made, I'm not as critical of others as you are.

 

[Bird]

And speaking of lawnmower hazards, I just saw another one. I'm helping a young couple next door move to a bigger house about 5 or 6 miles from here. When I took a truckload over there this morning, a lady across the street was out mowing the front yard; walk behind, power mower, of course, and she was wearing shorts and was barefoot! I assume the man standing out in the yard watching her mow is her husband. Now they have a very pretty lawn, so it ought to be nice to walk on barefoot, but it's a little hard for me to understand mowing barefoot.

 

[ultrarunner]

One of the things I value on TBN is reading about safety issues... sometimes all it takes is a little more awareness or an accident to drive home how quickly things can happen.

Pure Speculation... my guess is a combination of factors including hearing loss.

My 80+ year old Dairy Farmer Grandfather always chopped his own firewood with an AX and never a problem... My cousin the new Farmer said it was too much work and was worried about Grand Dad using an AX so he bought a vertical Log Splitter...

Grand Dad was reluctant to use it at first but was persuaded to give it a try and marveled at how easy it was to my Grandmother when he came in for lunch. After lunch he went back to splitting wood and rested his hand on the anvil taking off three fingers... leaving his pinkie and thumb... It was a tragedy and he only blamed himself for being too old which was sad...

 

[kebo]

My ex father-in-law had an unfortunate accident some years ago. He had an Exmark ZTR mower and was mowing the yard in front of his house right along the edge of the paved highway. He was cutting the right of way and there was as shallow ditch along the road to catch water runoff. He got the mower stuck and got off to try and move it with his hands. Mistake number one was that he had disabled the safety switches so it was still running with blades engaged. Problem number two was that he grabbed the mower deck to try and move it with!! Well, the blades got portions of 4 fingers as I recall. Two on each hand if my memory serves me right. My ex (his daughter) and I drove him to the hospital. He didn't lose a whole lot of the fingers though, most people don't really notice it unless they look close.

His reason for grabbing under the mower deck was that he thought there was more clearance between the blades and the edge of the deck. As for disabling the safety switches, he got tired of it cutting off everytime he got off to pick up a piece of trash or something. All this from a a very smart man with an engineering degree who worked as a maintainence engineer at a big plant for like 25 years. Duhhhh!!!!