"aemeijers" wrote in message
...
Robert Green wrote: (snip)

"In the United States, approximately 9400 children younger than 18 years
receive emergency treatment annually for lawn mower-related injuries.
More
than 7% of these children require hospitalization, and power mowers
cause a
large proportion of the amputations during childhood. Prevention of lawn
mower-related injuries can be achieved by design changes of lawn mowers,
guidelines for mower operation, and education of parents, child
caregivers,
and children. . . . Power lawn mowers caused 22% of the amputation
injuries
among children admitted to one regional level 1 trauma center"

source:

http://aappolicy.aappublications.org...ics;107/6/e106

All I can say is that if parents don't properly train their kids to
operate
powertools (and it's clear they don't - I learned OTJ, like most of
you!),
then someone has to step in, in loco parentis, to compensate. Often,
that's
the Consumer Product Safety Commission. I'm a cheap SOB but I am not
enough
of a skinflint that I'd wish a kid, especially doing chores or trying to
start a backyard business, the loss of their fingers or their toes, to
save
$5 or $10 off a lawnmower.

Not a matter of saving the $5 or $10- it is a matter of badly-designed
dead-man switches and skirts making the mower less usable for somebody
who knows what they are doing, who wears hard shoes when mowing, and
just wants to get the job done. Little kids (under 15 or so) probably
should NOT operate power equipment. They don't have enough life
experience to pay attention while the engine is running. No kids here,
so I am not putting anyone but me at risk. When I sell the mower, I'll
take the magnets off the deadman switch handle, and cut the zip-tie
holding the skirt up, and all the nanny features will be back in
operation. Next owner can make their own decision.

It seems that's a reasonable option - they could make the safety interlocks
much, much hard to defeat but they don't and that is a realization that
they're a pain to "smart" people. So, if you know what you're doing, you
disable them, and if you don't, you can't. The problem is that all this
stuff gets sold without a lot of instruction so the safety interlocks become
the last line of defense. No one wins when a kid loses fingers or toes in a
lawnmower and a kid mowing a lawn is something to encourage - it means
they're not huffing glue, vandalizing cars or stealing bicycles. (-: Like
I said, I neither mind paying for nor having to defeat the safety features
if a few more kids get to keep their digits.

--
Bobby G.