Good lesson for all of us. This is why the lower blade speeds were mandated.

Interesting. There's a tendency to look at the warnings on your "stuff" as alarmist claptrap- we're all guilty of it at some point or another. Thanks for the reminder! Glad no one got hurt.

You should have an edging between those rocks and the grass. That would have prevented it.

But I agree, people shouldnt be near my mowing area.

I have a tow behind mower with almost no guarding, that will lauch grass about 20-30'. You cant see rocks coming out of it they are so fast.

to add to this, a few years back i pulled up at work on a day when we were closed. the landscaping guy was just finished cutting and cranked his weedeater as i got out of my tahoe. i ran in, grabbed a file i needed, and went back outside to the tahoe. my rear window was busted in a thousand pieces! the weedeater had thrown a small rock thru the window from 20 ft away! this was the smaller rear side window, so it took a good bit of force to break it.

ANY TIME you use OPE no one else should be outside.

I'm sorry but I don't see the suprise in that. Sorry about the door.

I once used a line trimmer while wearing shorts. Only once.

Years ago my dad was mowing with a push mower, and the blade picked up a metal ring from an old coffee can, sent to into the door of the GMC truck 10 yards away, them bounced of the truck door and hit my mom in the cheek cutting her cheek. My mom was in the yard obviously but nowhere near the mower. Fortunately other than a cut on her cheek she was not injured.

This brings up a good point, and I see it nearly every day. I don't know the laws concerning this, if there are any, but watching the landscapers cutting on the side of the road, around houses, wherever...and have their stinkin' deflectors either bungeed up or removed. If it's not a law it should be, these people are adjacent to sidewalks and foot traffic of all likes and it's an accident waiting to happen.

Some of my contractor customers remove the shields from their trimmers. I have to wonder how long before sommebody gets hurt.

My Kubota has a steel chute on the outlet which directs anything coming out downward. I've run over gravel before, but it never gets airborne like that . . . . maybe it bounced upward off the concrete driveway? - Still, I agree with you that Rule #1 is no children in the yard whenever I'm mowing

Don

HI, over here in the uk there are a lot of rear discharge mowers,to stop this problem. I have a 35hp diesel Hustler, and cut large areas around horses, cars and people,and stones arent a problem.Scag dealers here also modify to rear discharge.Nowadays with insurance and accidents now becoming lawsuits, rear discharge could be more of a consideration.I am presuming most american mowers are side discharge,as no one mentioned rear.

Thanks for all the replies.

This is not an issue of deflector chutes, nor would rear-discharge have helped - because I use mulching blades and the JD mulch kit, which has a thick metal baffle installed over the discharge part of the deck, to keep grass in so it can be mulched. Here is a pic (old pic, low quality). See curved black metal baffle with two rows of small holes in it (for airflow), inside discharge chute - held in by two stout bolts.

Plus, the discharge chute was not aimed at the garage - couldn't have been, the steel post of my basketball hoop makes that impossible (if the blades were over those rocks with chute aimed at garage, that post would be coming up thru my right-rear tire, or my seat).

The rock had to have gone under the bottom lip of my mower deck. It could have gotten a nice ricochet off the concrete driveway.

{{gwi:355393}}

Last month while my wife was cutting she ran over a piece of chain link fence. Apparantly my hill-billy neighbor's kid threw it into our yard. It was settled down in the grass so she didn't see it. The mower blade drove a piece of steel completly through the side wall on one of my rear tires. The tire was unrepairable and cost me $85.00 to replace. If that steel had been thrown at someone standing nearby I'm certain it would have had enough force to kill them if it hit them above the waist. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the tire but the flying steel ripped through that heavy rubber up like it was made of wet paper.

I cringe when I C people without safety glasses using sring trimmers.

All machinery should be considered possibly dangerous to operate or be around. When I was 12-13 I saw a push mower pick up and sail a tin can lid into a ladies leg. Took a trip to the hospital to get it stitched up. That's a memory I won't forget. I see people with a power mower, tennis shoes on and lowering the mower down the ditch embankment, that's like playing russian roulette. A power mower will chew up a lot of leg before it stalls! My best advise COMMON SENSE-COMMON SENSE-COMMON SENSE