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What's your opinion on this "safety feature" on every riding mower these days?

I personally think it's lawsuit paranoia run amuck. Honestly - if you're so brain-dead you can't watch what you're doing while backing up - you really have no place on a riding mower.

I'd find a way to disable it - whether big brother likes it or not. Luckily, all my stuff is too old to have this 'feature'.

most mowers have a switch (or like my Poulan has a position on the key switch) to allow the blades to be engaged while backing up.

What always cracks me up is that there is always a reason (a person) for the safety features you see today. For example, on a cup of hot coffee, does it really need to say, "Caution: Hot!" It annoys me that things need to have warnings like that. If someone is so dumb, they probably shouldn't be drinking coffee or they deserve to get burned lol.

abeja_reina_1989 said:

What always cracks me up is that there is always a reason (a person) for the safety features you see today. For example, on a cup of hot coffee, does it really need to say, "Caution: Hot!" It annoys me that things need to have warnings like that. If someone is so dumb, they probably shouldn't be drinking coffee or they deserve to get burned lol.

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Have you purchased a ladder recently? They are so festooned with warning labels and safety stickers...actually, the real reason companies put warning labels and stickers on consumer goods is so when someone gets injured, they can say "but we DID warn you what could happen, so it's your own fault you got hurt" Most warning labels and irritating safety features are there so people CANNOT sue the maker of the item that injured them -- at least with much success. If you burn yourself drinking coffee, Mickey D's will say "But we put a label on the cup that says HOT" If you break your neck using your ladder as a pogo stick (!) Keller the ladder maker will say "But we put a label on the ladder that says not to use it as a pogo stick (sarcasm intended here).

There are a lot of stupid people in the world who persist in doing stupid things, hence all the warnings and safety features. Too bad we can't slap a sticker on their foreheads that says "DO NOT REPRODUCE, HAZARD OF CREATING STUPID OFFSPRING" (sarcasm intended, courtesy of the old poop). :laughing:

I wanna make a 'warning' sticker that looks like the fed's required sticker on my AGWAY.

!WARNING!

I'm gonna have a 'crossed out' circle around a question mark here, and the text below it will read:

If you are so clueless that you need a sticker to tell you to operate this machine with at least the common sense God gave a fruitfly:

for your safety, and the safety of everyone around you - just walk away from this machine. Ask for assistance from a thinking adult.

:thumbsup:

I sell mowers for a living. I also have a jD rider that does not now in reverse unless you push down this yellow button. it drives me crazy as well! I always think back to the time I attended sales training and the instructor told the story of the lady that backed over her toddler and ever since than osha required the reverse button. I am mechanical at heart and I could by pass that switch easily but when I think of doing it I think of that toddler and I refrain from doing it. I guess I am stuck in the reverse land.

jbgreen said:

I sell mowers for a living. I also have a jD rider that does not now in reverse unless you push down this yellow button. it drives me crazy as well! I always think back to the time I attended sales training and the instructor told the story of the lady that backed over her toddler and ever since than osha required the reverse button. I am mechanical at heart and I could by pass that switch easily but when I think of doing it I think of that toddler and I refrain from doing it. I guess I am stuck in the reverse land.

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Hmm, so are you against them? Or are you for living with them because some oblivious woman killed her kid? Just wanna be clear here. I personally hate the idea. If people are oblivious, that's just ducky. They can be oblivious ON THE PORCH - away from power equipment.

The rest of us should not be hassled by it, because we tend to kind of look where we are driving our machinery. If we truly are so worried about the safety, we can always just disengage the PTO........

BTW, welcome to LMF!:biggrin:

i hate that i have a jd with the reverce deal i have to hold up on the switch or when i back up the blade disingages and the only reason it still works is i have a friend who sales insurance and he told me if i unhooked the switch and i had a acident and didnot get it hooked back up before they come to investagate that they would not pay anything on the claim.

jd335 said:

i hate that i have a jd with the reverce deal i have to hold up on the switch or when i back up the blade disingages and the only reason it still works is i have a friend who sales insurance and he told me if i unhooked the switch and i had a acident and didnot get it hooked back up before they come to investagate that they would not pay anything on the claim.

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...and snappers have a physical lever that blocks the gate to reverse until you disengage the PTO. Cheaper models yet have an interlock that'll kill the motor if you go into reverse with the PTO on. Like getting off the seat.



It p___es me off that the industry is put into such a position. Obviously, they don't want to have to do this, or they wouldn't make it so easy to disable this stuff. They just don't tell you how. But, if you have a little mechanical aptitude, 90% of these systems can be overidden in 5 minutes or less. Even the cable-operated Snapper system can be permanently disabled.

But, it's stll there, which is more to my point. Extra wiring, switches, or cables and gate blockers, knobs and dohickeys - they all add cost (and add more that could go wrong, which leads to longer diagnostics time). With things as they are, they can't come off a recession themselves with soft numbers becasue their equipment is $200 more expensive than it needs to be just to satisfy Big Brother.

Unless they have a sad anecdote to hitch their new regs to. As most anecdotal stories go, there is no real logic to why the story happened to begin with. Was the child supervised while mom was mowing? Did mom keep an eye on what was going on around her whilst mowing? Just a couple of questions lead to any verdict other than THE MOWER WAS AT FAULT because it didn't FORCE her to turn off the deck before backing up. (or pull a knob, flip a lever, etc....) One more question: If she backed over her kid so far that the DECK killed the toddler, would it have made any difference if it was engaged or not?

What BS........(NO, NOT A WORD OF THIS IS DIRECTED AT ANYONE IN THIS, OR ANY OTHER, FORUM)

Well I really don't think that we all should have deal with the reverse issue, but my experence with the sales training and that instructor stays in my mind. My mower does not bother my to much because I don't use it very often. most of the time I bring home a demo ZTR and mow my lawn fast. My kids will use my rider at home if I work to many hours so I leave it connected because they cut the lawn sometimes when I am not there. They are old enough but my wife does not watch them like I do, so I will just keep it hooked up for now.

jbgreen said:

Well I really don't think that we all should have deal with the reverse issue, but my experence with the sales training and that instructor stays in my mind. My mower does not bother my to much because I don't use it very often. most of the time I bring home a demo ZTR and mow my lawn fast. My kids will use my rider at home if I work to many hours so I leave it connected because they cut the lawn sometimes when I am not there. They are old enough but my wife does not watch them like I do, so I will just keep it hooked up for now.

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Okay, cool.

Now that's clear, and I've sufficiently vented, where was this topic going again?:laughing:

Oh, that's right.....not much of anywhere...

twall said:

I wanna make a 'warning' sticker that looks like the fed's required sticker on my AGWAY.

!WARNING!

I'm gonna have a 'crossed out' circle around a question mark here, and the text below it will read:

If you are so clueless that you need a sticker to tell you to operate this machine with at least the common sense God gave a fruitfly:

for your safety, and the safety of everyone around you - just walk away from this machine. Ask for assistance from a thinking adult.

:thumbsup:

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Here is a good sticker for you... it pretty much sums it up:laughing:... See the attached... :smile:KennyV