What do you wear when you mow?

kw: safety

This picture was taken by a colleague, who passed it along via e-mail to all of us. The boot belongs to a construction worker who habitually wears his steel-toed boots when lawn mowing. It is a good thing he does so. He had an incident a day or two ago that resulted in a riding mower running over his foot. The mower blade ripped the steel toe out of his boot. Three of his toes were cut, but not too badly, probably by the steel toe as it made its exit. Had he been wearing sneakers, it is likely he would have lost all the toes on that foot. You can see where the blade hit the boot…

The average rotary mower has a five-to-seven horsepower engine, and the kinetic energy in the whirling blade is similar to a stick of dynamite. Riding mowers are roughly twice as powerful. Think about it the next time you mow barefoot.