Lawn Mower Safety

Lawn mowers have become much safer to operate over the years. However, accidents involving lawn mowers do still happen from time to time due to people not observing proper safety precautions.

Walk-behind mowers are probably the safest to use these days due to the lever or control bar mounted on the handle. On cheaper mowers when you release this lever or bar, it causes the engine and cutting blade to stop. On more expensive mowers, releasing the lever or bar causes the blade to stop but not the engine. This way, you don't have to restart the mower once you are ready to go on.

As with any power equipment, you should make sure you have properly protected your body. This means that you should wear goggles to keep flying debris out of your eyes, as well as earplugs to protect your ears from the loud engine noise. It is also very important that you wear shoes that provide good traction. You don't want to slip and fall while pushing a lawn mower. Do not wear open-toed shoes, such as sandals. You should wear tight-fitting clothing to ensure that you don't accidentally catch your clothing in the mower.

Before you begin to mow, you should check the lawn for any objects such as branches, rocks, bottles, etc., that shouldn't be there. Hitting an object like one of these with a lawn mower can throw the object into the air, causing injury to yourself or others.

You should make sure that the shields and mower guards are working properly before you begin to mow. If you need to adjust the wheel height on the mower, do so when the mower is not running. When using attached bags, you always want to turn the mower off before detaching or attaching the bag.

You should not mow when the grass is wet because wet grass will increase the possibility of slipping and falling. Steep slopes can also be dangerous; therefore, you may want to consider an alternative such as planting some type of ground cover so that you won't have to mow the slope. If you must mow a steep slope, you should cut across the incline.

All of the same precautions are true for riding mowers also. However, it is important to know that riding mowers can be very unstable on steep inclines so you will need to mow up and down the incline rather than across.

Keep in mind that riding mowers are not designed to be used by children. They are not the same as three wheelers or dirt bikes. You should not allow children to operate riding mowers or ride with you on the back of one.

Use a little common sense and follow these suggestions when using your lawn mower. This will help ensure the safety of yourself as well as your family.