In 1986, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported a lot of baseball related injuries. They figured out that 35 to 71% of those injuries were occurring while sliding into a base during play.
A break-away base had been manufactured. It had a rubber mat that was flush with the in-field surface. The rubber was mounted to metal posts. To dislodge this base it took only 1/5th the force required to dislodge a regular stationary base.
A summer series of ballgames was set up. Teams played 633 games on two fields with breakaway bases and 627 games on six fields with stationary bases. Players were all types of people and were randomly assigned to the fields.
At the end of the summer they tabulated the results. On the stationary bases, they had 45 sliding injuries, 43 involved the lead foot or the head, 24 involved the ankle and the total medical costs were $55,050.00.
They did the same thing on the breakaway bases. They had two injuries; one fracture and one ankle sprain. Total medical costs were $700.00.
Now, here is my question: You have a 10th grade child at a high-school where the coach and the principal both know about these break-away bases, but they won't spend the money to put them in. And they tell your child, now when you run from first to second, you run as hard and as fast as you can. When you get close to second, you slow down and be careful.
How would you like that? We're doing the same thing in a number of our plants all over America. We're asking workers to be productive around unguarded hazards and we tell them when they get close to the hazard, they are to slow down and be careful. Uncontrolled hazards will in time create their share of injuries. Safetythroughdesign™ eliminates, guards and warns about these hazards in this order.
Safetythroughdesign™ is a registered trademark of The Warren Group. For more about Safetythroughdesign™ please see our website at http://www.warren-group.com .