I realize that this may come as a shock to some that anyone would ever consider substituting a lawyer for an engineer, but apparently its happened.
My dad is out of town for three weeks and is paying me to cut his grass. He’s got a good sized yard and has a riding mower that he uses to cut it with. A fairly new riding mower. One with all kinds of safety interlocks and other gimmicks designed to prevent someone who hasn’t the common sense the gods gave a gannet from killing himself by sticking his hands in some place he shouldn’t. One that damn near killed me today.
I’m no stranger to riding lawnmowers. Some of my earliest memories are of me in my father’s lap as he drove our old yellow International Harvester Cub Cadet lawnmower around the back yard, cutting the grass.
That thing drove like a car. There was a gas pedal and a brake pedal. It had a gearshift, a choke, a lever to raise and lower the deck, and to turn the blades on and off. That was it. Driving it was like driving a car. Came in handy when I learned how to drive, all those Saturdays I spent mowing the yard, let me tell you.
My parents have long since divorced, dad’s remarried and has bought a new place and a new mower. A mower that was obviously designed by a lawyer.
First of all, the damn thing won’t run unless your ass is firmly in the seat. If you get a little uncomfortable while cutting the grass and decide to shift from the left cheek to the right cheek, it’ll shut off. Handy feature that, makes you wish your car had the same feature. :rolleyes:
Second, one cannot move the throttle handle (“conviently” located to the right and rear of the driver’s seat) and have the brake depressed at the same time. The thing’s either fuckin’ movin’ or its fuckin’ stopped. No rapid dancing between pedals to get you out of a tightspot quickly. No, you first touch the brake, slam into the steering wheel, check yourself for injuries, restart the mower (since the screeching halt you just came to has thrown you far enough forward to activate the “kill switch” embedded in the seat) and then, if you’ve got to back up, raise the deck up, take your foot off the brake, slide the throttle handle into reverse, jam on the brakes, restart the mower (because you were thrown hard enough to trip the switch again), put it into forward, lower the deck, and repeat. What a fun time.
Third, the location of the throttle handle. Instead of being a pedal that one could use like they do in a car, or located on the dash, its behind you. So you get to drive the damn thing with one hand on the steering wheel and the other twisted around behind you holding the throttle, so if you accidentally tap the brakes you can put it back into drive (assuming the motor doesn’t cut off).
Now, no self-respecting engineer (And if their fingernails ain’t dirty they ain’t an engineer! They’re just an over-paid dork who smells good.), would design anything like that. But a lawyer would.
A lawyer would be worried that some candidate for natural selection might actually find a way to hurt himself doing something with the lawnmower that the maker didn’t intend. (Like using it to clip his toenails.) Or that said candidate might hurt himself by doing something any rational human would consider such as trying to clear a rope from the blades while they’re still powered. Never mind that the gene pool would be better off without these drecks, the lawyers are worried that the victims’ families will hire other lawyers to sue the piss out of the company that made the machine which insured that the wingnut who decided to cut his hair with a lawnmower is not able to bring down the collective IQ with his spawnings.
Mind you, if someone dies because a bean counter decided to replace a steel strap with a rubber band and the car the person’s riding in explodes when a bird craps on the rear bumper, I say “Sue the motherfuckers!” Especially when you can prove that they knew it could happen and made the damn thing anyways.
:::Wanders off muttering to himself:::