I've done this myself, more than once. I hope I remember never to do it again.

Tragic news story in Rowan County, NC earlier today. Towing riding lawnmower may cost a woman her life.
Woman Injured by Flying Screwdriver
Tuesday, August 16, 2005

53-year-old Rhonda Walker Collins.. flown to the hospital by helicopter.. with a screwdriver embedded in her skull.

She was cutting the grass at her home on Cline road in Rowan County when her riding lawn mower broke down.

Her husband tried to tow it with a golf cart. Apparently he was using a screwdriver to attach the rope, but the line snapped and sent the screwdriver into the air, and into Collins.

At last check she was in critical condition."

 

He probably had a perfectly good roll of duct tape in that golf cart.

Hate to make light of peoples misfortune, but c'mon, think a little.


phox

 

I wonder how exactly he was attaching the rope with a screwdriver...


Now I do a whole lot of stupid things that can get me killed, but when it comes to screwing with tow ropes, I'm very paranoid...

 

I gotta agree with you. I'm not Mr. Safety, but some things...

Hopefully some will learn from others mistakes.

 

Thats unfortunate to hear.... I like to make sure towing apparatus is overkill for the job. even if that means using a 20000lb strap and 16 ton shackles to move to move a 500lb lawnmower...

 

I feel for the woman, she needs a new husband.

BUT, doesn't a rope have 2 ends that you tie together???

 

I'm sure they're talking using the screwdriver as a hitch pin (I hope).

We made up some out of 3/8's round stock. Bent the last 2" and painted them orange.

 

Yes that's what the TV news as much as said. Apparently the husband was using a screwdriver as a hitch pin but I don't know at which end or which way the lawnmower was being towed, forward or backwards. I don't use a tow rope anymore because of the rubber band effect. But I have used a screwdriver as a hitch pin between the lawnmower and the little 6 cubic foot trailer....but I won't even do that anymore.
Nat

 

I have 50 feet of 1/2 high test chain in 10 foot lengths (so I can move it!) It is tagged at 56k working load.

 

can that chain safely be moved with anything smaller than a 1500?

 

No. Actually when I had my 1500 there was a noticable ride difference with it in the bed...

 

can we have pictures of this chain?

 

I just got a digital camera. I'll put some in my gallery when I do that...

 

Here is the complete tragic story. The husband is not as guilty (or as ignorant) as we thought.
Nat

The Salisbury (NC) Post
by Scott Jenkins

MOUNT ULLA — A Cline Road woman died Wednesday after being removed from life support following an accident in which a screwdriver became lodged in her head.

Rhonda Collins, 53, died about 1:15 p.m. at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, according to her husband, Floyd Collins. He said his wife was an organ donor and "any number" of her organs would go to help others.

Rhonda Collins, of 349 Cline Road, was flown to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte after the accident Tuesday morning. Her husband said Wednesday that his wife was brain dead following the accident.

Collins said his wife was mowing heavy grass around the barn at their farm when her riding lawn mower got bogged down and quit. He tried to get it running again, but the battery was dead.

He asked his wife to get some rope from the tool shed so he could use a golf cart to tow the mower to the shed and charge the battery. She mistakenly got a nylon cord instead.

Collins, 84, said he has trouble getting around, so his wife insisted on tying the cord to the mower herself. She wrapped the other end of the cord around a screwdriver and stuck it behind the golf cart bumper.

He said the golf cart has an attachment under the bumper that he would have looped the cord through, and he thought Rhonda Collins did that.

As he towed the mower, Rhonda Collins sat on it and steered. Near the tool shed, she turned the wheel, he said, and the extra tension on the already-taut cord pulled the screwdriver free.

"That nylon rope must have been something like a rubber band, so when it released, it made the screwdriver like a dart," Collins said.

When he turned around, Collins saw his wife lying on a concrete pad at the tool shed, her feet tangled in the lawn mower steering wheel.

He found the screwdriver sticking in the right side of his wife's head and pulled it out.

"It was a freak accident," Collins said.

Lt. John Sifford said a Rowan County Sheriff's Office investigation came to the same conclusion.

"Everything at the scene leads us to believe that it was an unfortunate accident," Sifford said.

Rhonda Collins' son and daughter were at the hospital with her, Collins said. He was waiting for her brothers to arrive late Wednesday afternoon.

Floyd and Rhonda Collins wed about three years ago in a second marriage for both of them, he said. They met several years before his first wife died, when Rhonda worked as a registered nurse in Mecklenburg County with Collins' daughter.

She had worked as a nurse at the Mecklenburg County Jail and at Carolinas Medical in Charlotte. She still worked weekends and occasionally filled in during the week at the hospital's Huntersville branch.

And, Collins said, his wife enjoyed working on their farm.

"She liked to farm. She liked the cattle and other livestock on the farm," he said.

Collins called his wife "a sweet person."

 

WOW, makes you think