Mower Recommendations

SeniorCitizen said:

John Deere
I rigged mine so the Reverse button stays pushed down.

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2muchgrass2mow said:

Ditto. I did some research on mower "back-up" accidents. There are stats out there that are quite revealing. The victims are ALWAYS under 5 years old - usually considerably under. The mower operators are almost ALWAYS parents or kin, and the primary injuries are ALWAYS gruesome and disabling, lost feet, partial legs, arms, sometimes even internal organ damage and, although not often, death. What follows is years of extensive medical treatment, prosthetic limbs, ruined lives and ALWAYS massive and inescapable guilt on the part of the operator that cannot be remedied!
The chief cause of these tragic incidents lies in allowing toddlers to be or not knowing they're outside during a mowing session. That's just plain old child endangerment!!! I've always disabled the reverse safety switch on all my mowers. But I have no small children or pets, nor do my neighbors. Furthermore, I mow a one-acre field which has many obstacles and is super hilly AND my one-half acre home lot, which is chain-link fenced, has an outbuilding, wife's huge flower garden, a huge deck, many angular in corners, several large rocks and the like. I would never, ever disable the seat safety switch, but my mowing situation requires reverse on demand not only as a matter of convenience, but also of safety- especially on steep hills in the field. I must reverse repetitively, and very quickly! It would add hours to my mowing and unnecessary frustration and risk to leave that switch operational. I'm sure many of you have similar situations. For those of you who sell mowers, I understand the legal risk of modifying or advising modification of the switch. I get it. You can't!

Finally, unless I'm backing up just a couple feet or less, I ALWAYS look behind me. It's just common sense. Keep your kids, especially toddlers, off the lawn while you're mowing. Make sure someone's there to watch them. Look behind when backing. Be smart and not sorry (sorry doesn't even cover it)!

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Tiger Small Engine said:

If it is your mower, you can decide to add more safety switches (sort of joking), or disable safety switches. The liability and responsibility is on you. The manufacturer installed safety switches because people are always the brightest, accidents happen, and liability.

About 2 (usually toddlers) are killed a year in a country of 340,000,000 million people. Some people need the government to help with common sense.

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Auto Doc's said:

Hello 2muchgrass2mow,

Common sense only exists among people who are too poor to be stupid. I was raised to give my best effort regardless of chance of failing.

Here is a prime example of government: (A parable that I copy and pasted from online)

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. (End)

To add to that:

The first person with the great idea is the last person you will find taking action because they want to watch everyone else do the work so they can step in at the end and take the credit.

When I went in the military, the advice everyone liked to give is "never volunteer for anything". (That screams lazy people who just want to hold me back)

Heck, some of my best assignments came from volunteering. It made a lot of my peers mad, because they were not being recognized by the upper ranks.

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