Unfortunately there are just too many people like my neighbor. I don’t know if he is clueless or just doesn’t care.
Lawn mowers and snow blowers aren’t subject to the same environmental regulations as cars. This is actually evidence that the EPA does need to exist, because as this proves, if the government isn’t making engine manufacturers be more gentle on the environment, they won’t.
Laws and regulations seem necessary to protect US from ourselves. When you consider the ignorant, apathetic and down right stupid among US whose actions must be regulated for the “greater good” it’s amazing that the speed limit didn’t remain at 55mph. It’s such a shame that WE informed, concerned, intelligent people must suffer for the shortcomings of those others.
Does anyone recall lawn mowers without the automatic kill switch in the handle? Who knows why that kill switch is necessary?
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Because of stupid people.
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Yeah wasn’t that long ago. The kill switch prevents you from getting your hands and feet under the mower. My old Toro simply had a blade brake but let the engine run. Having the engine shut off every time you have to move something is a pita so I just use a cable tie to keep the thing running. I also disabled the seat shut off on my rider. So sue me.
When I was a kid though, three four of us were trying to figure out what the problem was with a mower. We started it and my friend (former friend now for other reasons) grabbed the thing to lift it up. Came back with a bloody finger running for home and calling for Mommy. A few stitches took care of it. He was lucky. So I guess it does happen but none of the rest of us would have put our hands under a running mower.
55mph had absolutely nothing to do with safety. Jimmy Carter ordered that national highway funds be withheld from any state that did not lower their speed limits to 55mph during the gas shortage in the early '70s. It was ostensibly to reduce gas usage in the U.S. I lived through that pathetic farce.
You’re wandering into a philosophical argument of whether the function of laws is to protect us from ourselves. Taken down that slippery slope, we’ve gotten into a place where IMHO far too many of our personal decisions, including private medical decisions, are being made by laws and regulatory agencies, robbing us of much of our freedom to run our own lives. Go down that road and [quote=“Rod_Knox, post:63, topic:100125”]
WE informed, concerned, intelligent people must suffer for the shortcomings of those others.
[/quote]
And that’s just plain wrong.
Would you like federal regulators telling you how to brush your teeth? How to wash your back? What toothpaste to use? How you should get your hair cut? If so, you an get that in Russia, Cuba, or North Korea.
IMHO laws should be to protect the prey from the predators. Unfortunately, they’ve been twisted to in many cases protect the predators from the prey. Criminals seem to have more legal protections than victims.
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No it was Nixon that lowered the speed not Carter. Carter did and does some stupid stuff but Nixon is the one that did this stupid deed.
Incidentally on the small engines, the new ones are going with fuel injection now to eliminate the same issues the EPA caused in carbs in cars years ago. So costs will go up I’m sure.
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Correction: As part of his response to the oil embargo, President Nixon signed a federal law lowering all national highway speed limits to 55 mph.*
This is a matter of record, so I don’t know why so many people get it wrong.
*http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-signs-national-speed-limit-into-law
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https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0074.htm
regardless who dropped the speed to 55 or why it became evident that lower speeds resulted in safer driving and so I remarked “it’s amazing…”
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Blade brakes are still legal. My 3 year old Honda push mower has one, which is actually kinda funny because it’s a key-start mower and so it wouldn’t be a PITA at all if the motor shut off when you let go of the handle. My guess is that it’s cheaper to have the whole motor shut off than it is to install a clutch assembly, and so most mowers don’t have them.
They should also be in place to protect society from stupid people. Just because Joe Mine Owner is too short sighted or sociopathic to understand or care that dumping mine waste into the river will hurt people by way of hurting the environment doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to deal with the consequences. He’s less likely to pollute the river if polluting the river is illegal and that law is enforced.
Here are EPA emission standards for nonroad engines and vehicles. The smallest - handheld engines 80cc and below - are at the bottom. The EPA touches everything.
Small gasoline engines must be real air polluters. Our garage door is on the west side of our house. I can start our vehicles in the garage (with the garage door open of course) and even if the wind is blowing from the west, the smoke alarm in the garage doesn’t go off. However, if the wind is from the west and I start my mower or snow.blower outside the garage with the door open, it will set off the smoke alarm. The snow blower is a 2 stroke and the mower is a 4 stroke.
I think Nevada was the last state to comply with the 55mph national speed limit. I remember crossing the state line from California in late January 1974. You could see black smoke puffs from I-15 traffic tailpipes as pedals went to the metal.
Leaf blowers and other small engines (especially 2-strokes) are HUGE polluters. Here’s fro a 2011 test by Edmunds:
Edmunds’ InsideLine.com FTP 75 Emissions Test Results (in grams per minute)
Engine / Non-Methane Hydrocarbons(NMHC) / Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) / Carbon Monoxide (CO)
2011 Ford Raptor / 0.005 / 0.005 / 0.276
2012 Fiat 500 / 0.016 / 0.010 / 0.192
Ryobi 4-stroke leaf blower / 0.182 / 0.031 / 3.714
Echo 2-stroke leaf blower / 1.495 / 0.010 / 6.445
Back in the 1950s, we didn’t think much about air pollution. My dad bought a new LawnBoy mower with a 2 stroke engine back in 1955. The required fuel mixture was 1/2 pint of 30 weight non-detergent oil to a gallon of gasoline–a 16 to 1 ratio. The engine blew blue smoke all the time it was running and was particularly bad when a cold engine was started with full choke and then run for a minute as suggested by the manual at half choke for warmup. Now, my snow blower a d roto tiller with 2 stroke engines run a 50:1 mixture.
Not many lawn mowers in DC I guess. At least not used by homeowners. I wonder what the engineers were paid that came up with that stuff.
We’ll wait for Mike to admit the error of his ways. They really are everywhere, including ditches on Minnesota farm fields.
Let’s not start the debate again whether 55 saved lives. I think that remains questionable. The roads were designed for 70 and above with the vehicles of the 50’s. At the same time that cars crawled along at 55 on super highways, cars were being equipped with air bags, crush zones, seat belt buzzers, and so on. Plus the limited supply of petro drove down the miles driven. I commented to a state patrol friend that with the 55 limit, cars tended to bunch up to create dangerous congestion. There was simply not enough difference between the minimum 45 and 55 so that cars could spread out a little.
Personally I think if we were really invested in saving lives, we’d focus on driver training and not revenue-centric laws.
It’s amazing that the Germans manage to drive at crazy speeds on the Authobahn and yet somehow it’s not a daily bloodbath. But then, it’s a lot harder to get a license there - you’re expected to actually know how to drive unlike here where as long as you can tool around on side streets without hitting trees, and parallel park without hitting a cone, you get a license.
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In the past, you guys have accused me of not being able to recognize when somebody is joking, on this forum
NOW who’s the one that couldn’t recognize that I was joking . . . ?!
By the way, I’m disappointed that you give me so little credit
We all know that I wrench for a living
anybody wrenching for a living KNOWS that chokes on automobiles are ancient history
Perhaps you think my knowledge is so outdated, that I thought there were still cars with chokes, coming off the assembly lines
Please . . .
Have you ever personally driven on the autobahn . . . ?
There are very few sections remaining with no speed limit, and if you encounter one, it’s only for a few miles
But I will say this . . . generally, the infrastructure there is better, meaning the roads are in better shape, and therefore better able to handle high speed