City lawn worker suffers serious injury in rollover lawnmower accident

Lawn care workers are at risk of serious injury or death from rollover accidents. Sloped grades with wet grass are a risk particular to this profession. The rollover protection or ROP is designed to save your life, but only if you wear the seatbelt. Even if you don't wear the belt or if the mower is not equipped with a ROP, you're still covered under Iowa's workers' compensation benefit insurance.

A lawn care worker in Lincoln, Nebraska was hospitalized after the lawn mower on which he was riding rolled on top of him. He is a 37-year-old man named Eric Kohles and was in reportedly critical condition. He was reportedly mowing a drainage easement. I drive a Lazer-Z commercial lawn mower and it comes standard with roll over protection or ROP as they call it. It's a royal pain in the neck because of it grabbing tree limbs and snapping them into the head of the driver. In my yard there are way too many limbs to deal with so as it is designed to do I lowered it to what I refer to as half-mast.

At half-mast I can put it on the trailer and back it into the garage. With the mower on the trailer if the ROP is elevated to full height it will not fit under the garage door. Well you can pretty much guess what happened. We spent thousands of dollars having new garage doors installed; the energy efficient type with windows and insulation. After I took the lawnmower to the local shop for a tune-up they raised the ROP and then loaded it onto the trailer while I was inside paying for the service. Then without saying anything to me they simply walked away. I drove home and proceeded to back into the garage without realizing the ROP was raised. It caused hundreds of dollars in damage to the house, the garage door and the lawnmower. The mower shop is more than likely told by the manufacturer to raise all ROP so they garage isn't later blamed if a rollover occurs and the driver injured.

See Lincoln, Neb., worker injured in mower accident, AP, August 17, 2010