Death by lawnmower
I had managed to go three whole months without mowing the lawn even once. But just three weeks after finishing the tiresome task, weeds had taken over the front yard, the unwelcome result of a spree of desert rain. Procrastinating just long enough to become the last remaining neighbor with a disheveled lawn, I pulled out the lawnmower this afternoon and did my job. Sweeping up with a push broom, the warmth was getting to me. It’s only March, I thought, and it’s already 80-degrees out. Rubbing my sweat-filled eye, I wondered how many people die each year while mowing the lawn. I grabbed a bottle of water and Googled.
According to The Risks of Lawnmowing, in 2006, 133 people in the United States were killed in lawnmower-related accidents. Over three times as many suffered death by lawnmower in 2005. (Incidentally, heat exhaustion is not listed as a cause.)
The numbers are surprising, to be sure. But having spent a significant amount of time in recent months researching dog attacks and breed-specific legislation (BSL) — an outright ban of all dogs of a certain breed or mix of breeds, which result in the seizure and killing of countless strays and even family pets each year — these numbers caught my attention for a very different reason.
A study run by DogsBite.org states that between January 2006 and December 2008 — a span of three years — a mere 88 people were killed by dogs. Just 30 of those people were killed in 2006.
In the same year that 30 people died in dog attacks, more than four times that number of people died while mowing the lawn.
I wondered if lawnmowers had ever been banned. The answer is no, but even when people have cried out for their extinction, it’s been for other reasons.
Namely, their carbon emissions. And the noise they make.
