Tragic robotic lawnmower accident

Jim Richey

I read this article and was reminded of the dangers of some of the inventions we tinker with on a daily basis.Hope this link works out:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower-kills-danish-man-begins-resistance/

Best wishes,Jim Richey

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Thanks, Parallax!

Dave Hein

It appears that this lawn mower was actually a radio-controlled unit, and not an autonomous robot as suggested by the article. My guess is that the operator was standing in a dangerous area below the area where the mower was operating.

When I was going to college I mowed ditches for the county for a couple of summers. There were cetainly some cases where it would have been safer to use an R/C mower than to have a human drive a tractor on a steep slope. The tractors had seat belts and roll bars, but I would hate to test the effectiveness of those "safety" devices. Some of the full-time workers at the county told us about people who had rolled their tractors and survived.

If used properly, an R/C mower should save more lives than it will take.

Dave

LSB

Concur. There have been a few tragedies caused by seatbelts, but over all...

LoopyByteloose

Having run a lawn care and landscape company for six years, I and my employess had a lot of near misses with mower accidents. We constantly worried about having an incident that might put someone in the hospital and us out of business.

The dilemmas are that the turf is always changing. So dampness or the amount of growth can significantly change the need for more forceful cutting. The taller the grass, the harder it is to anticipate hidden objects that might become airborne.

And then, dogs bring along bones, kids drop toys, and sprinkler heads get stuck in an up position. All of these things together make the lawn mower a random projectile launcher. Every year, windows are broken and people go to hospital due to being hit by something that was launched by a mower.

To add to that, if you ever have had the gasoline engine seize and come apart in a fireball, you might reach the same conclusions I have.

A robotic lawn mower is nothing like a Roomba - It requires far more failsafe devices. With all the liabities, I don't see how it would ever be a profitable business unless the volume of sales were huge.

Tree prunning and chainsaws are about the only other thing that I can think of as more dangerous. Just try to recognize that anything that is a 'cutting device' poses a significant and special hazard to human life and limb.

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