Often there’s a catalyst, a reason why something ends up in print. This article’s reason is Blue, my daughter’s dog. Striking blue eyes. She said she thought he’d grow up to be a nice, normal cow-dog-sized mutt. He hits his back walking under the dining room table and is somewhere well over 100 pounds. After last Tuesday afternoon, his name is Mudd.
She was late getting home from work, and the dog was getting more and more anxiously in need of outside facilities. Since Blue has been failing his “come when called” class, I got a leash on him and thought I was safe to escort him outside. The leash was a 20-foot retractable. Out the door and onto the porch, OK – about 3 feet of leash. I pushed the button to give him a little more, and he bolted. I remember seeing him hit the end of the leash and realizing that 125 pounds at 40 miles per hour was going to upset 250 pounds of septuagenarian. I remember realizing that I needed to let go of the leash, then being jerked off my feet, then hearing the crunch of my nose breaking as my head hit the concrete porch steps.
I realized I needed to let go, but before the message got to my hand, it was too late.
Working with and around machinery, especially farm machinery, there are many dangers visible and understood, but machinery moves faster than our reaction time. There’s the classic example of forking hay into a chopper. Should it plug at the intake point, the solution would seem to be to give the stuck hay a shove with the pitchfork. The danger is that should the chopper infeed grab the tines of the pitchfork at the same time it grabs the hay, it will pull the operator into the hay chopper before the operator can let go of the fork handle.
Driver’s education classes used to include films about reaction time, speed of reaction and distance traveled between events tests. The instruction car had a paint blaster attached. At a given point, the instructor would simultaneously shout “Stop!” and shoot a blot of paint onto the pavement. Another blot would fire when the driver first made a move to apply the brakes and another when the brakes were actually applied, with a final blot shot when the car was fully stopped. The longest distance between paint marks was that between the instructor’s command to stop and the driver’s first movement to stop the car.
To further teach how slow reflexes really are, there’s the $10 bill exercise. Have one person hold the bill by the upper edge. Have the second person hold their thumb and forefinger an inch apart, about an inch below the bill. If played as a parlor game, if the second person can close their thumb and forefinger to catch the bill after the person holding it lets go, it is now their property.
I have seen this tried many times over the years, and I have never seen anyone actually catch the bill. It’s usually dropped a foot or more before the catching hand closes, only to have already missed the falling bill.
Another scenario: Law enforcement officers are trained to fire if an assailant threatening them with a knife gets within 15 or 20 feet. That's because from that distance, the knife holder can run close and kill you before you can fire the weapon you are aiming with your finger on the trigger.
Understanding how long reflex and reaction time is can reduce the incidents of injury and the severity of injuries suffered, and dramatically increase lifespan. During driver’s training for first-time drivers, measuring the distance the car traveled from the time the instructor said “Stop” to the spot the driver made the first move to stop the car will leave a lasting impression. Hopefully, that impression will be adequate enough for the new driver to leave ample safe space between his or her vehicle and whatever is just ahead on the road.
The same applies when working near farm equipment or other machinery. Trust the guys that made it; leave safety shields in place. Understand that warnings attached to or included in the training/user manuals are there for a reason. When the manufacturer of a device places a warning sign stating, “Keep hands and fingers clear while this device is running,” it is because their liability lawyer staff and engineers realize that while nothing inside the warning sign’s area is visible or easily seen as a threat, by the time the parts in question start moving, the reaction time needed by an average person to get their hand out of there is not adequate and injuries will result. By the time you see the danger, it’s too late.
Is there anything you can do to shorten your reaction or reflex time? Practicing a repetitive movement can shorten the time to accomplish that movement. But that only improves what you do after you notice a danger. Awareness can also improve reaction time. If a person is familiar with the sequence of the traffic lights at a complex intersection, they will know when the next change will result in their green light. That heightened awareness plus being prepared may give you a half-second to a second-and-a-half advantage over the next driver.
Sanctioned drag races in an organized competition often have two equal cars in a race. Correctly anticipating the timing of the ready and go lights is what wins races when the cars are evenly matched. A car leaving before the green will be penalized as the loser. It becomes the awareness and alertness of the driver that wins races.
Thus, understanding the machine and its sequence of movements may make a person’s movements a bit less likely to result in injury. But is it worth the risk? Even with training, practice, alertness and the perceived quickness of youth, the best way to prevent being hit by a moving railroad train is to not play on the tracks.
That “quick adjustment” has a zero chance of injuring the adjuster if the machine is stopped and secured before making that quick change.
I once pulled aside a grandson about to get his driver’s license and said, “Behind the wheel there is no reset or do-it-over option." The same is true for placing appendages or heads in places where mechanical timing and the speed of moving parts will always be too fast to react to and move out of harm's way.
