Henry Payne for April 03, 2014

Running over 2 year olds is not funny – and it happens often enough to be a safe issue – those of you how hate “unnecessary regulations.”

2014 stop having kids. 2016 no more two year olds to run over. Problem solved!Or we could acknowledge things like head lights, turn signals, seat belts, air bags, etc have really been beneficial.

Ahem. Not meaning to interrupt this meeting of The Mutual Admiration Society, but —.One of my favorite cartoonists, Virgil Partch, illustrated an ad years ago for some car product (maybe a protective fluid additive). He pictured a car with huge springs all around to help avoid collisions. I’m surprised some government agency hasn’t mandated that before. Anybody here remember “VIP”?

OK, I work in outdoor power equipment service and repair. I have seen first hand how the so called safety devices have grown and changed over the years. At first there were few if any such devices or systems. People just knew how to run them safely without all that stuff. Then a few accidents happened and a few devices got added. Little if any real impact happen. Over time more and more devices got added as people started to get careless thinking their safety devices would protect them. The more got added and then they became more of a pain than most people were willing to put up with. Then people started to remove or bypass such devices. Now days you have machines on the loose that are more dangerous than ever as more and more devices get added the more that get removed. So now you end up with a dangerous machine because all of its safety devices are removed and bypass. And now these machines are being ran by people that should not be within a 100 yards of a machine much less running one because they have forget how to think for them selfs and be able to run a machine safety . When you have have to do though a checklist like an astronaut getting ready to blast off just to start your lawn mower people get mad and start cutting and bypassing safety systems. For a safety system to work it can not interfere with nominal operation past a certain point. Once it passes that point people will bypass and remove such systems.

Right now mandate: shut the hell up