A Fort Lauderdale personal injury attorney knows the statistics of lawn mower accidents and each spring and summer the number of lawn mower accidents spike as weekend lawn warriors gas up their machines and head outside.
Each year approximately 9,400 children are injured, many of the accidents resulting in amputations of arms, legs, fingers, toes, hands and feet. Experts say that the most serious accidents occur when operators back up riding lawnmowers with the mower blades engaged and run over small children they can’t see.
According to the Academy of Pediatrics, backover accidents alone account for 560 injuries to children each year.
Unfortunately, the lawnmower industry has known for years – because they have a number of studies – that there was a real problem with backovers of riding lawn mowers said one Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer. These backover cases are particularly lethal in terms of death and injury for young children.
The lawnmower industry adopted a voluntary industry safety standard in 2003 that required new rider lawnmowers to have a no-mow-in-reverse feature to prevent the mower from backing up with powered blades. Although there has never been a wide scale safety recalls for riding lawn mowers to have the no-mow-in-reverse device installed on older models, newer models coming off the assembly line should have this device but it is totally up to the manufacturer because it is a voluntary industry safety addition.
However, according to several Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers, the safety standards allow manufacturers to install a device that override this feature. Naturally, the override device defeats the purpose of the no-mow-in-reverse system.
The overall rate of all types of injuries for both adults and children is 2.6 injuries for every 1,000 ride-on mowers. That’s a very high percentage for a product used seasonally and usually only approximately twice a month.
In several cases in the no-mow-in-reverse device works on ground but not on hilly ground where the operator asks to back up or involuntarily slides back.
The most recent study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that the rate of lawnmower related injuries to children remained constant from 1990 through 2004 and concluded current safety features on these products are not adequate to prevent lawn mower related injuries.
