You Can Prevent Garage Door Accidents

Garage door openers are great devices. They add convenience and safety to your home, sparing you the trouble of manually opening your garage door. Yet, like any other mechanical device, there exists a potential for accidents, such as a child or pet being crushed under the door. How can you prevent such accidents from happening? As it turns out, garage doors come with built-in safety features, such as reversal mechanisms, and in this article, we'll take a look at some tricks for preventing garage door accidents. While this list isn't comprehensive, it will provide you with good suggestions for safeguarding your loved ones and your property.

Don't get crushed

You probably realize that your garage door is heavy, especially if you have ever had to manually open it. Many doors can weigh more than 300 pounds easily. Now imagine that weight crashing down on something...or someone. It is not a pretty picture. Fortunately, in 1982 the industry adopted safety reversal mechanisms as the standard. These mechanisms can detect an object or person underneath the door as its closing, and reverse the process. If your garage door opener does not have one, then you may want to consider having one installed. Once you have it, regular testing is highly recommended. A good and simple way to test the sensor is to close the door and place an object, such as a two by four board, underneath it. If the sensor is working properly, the door will stop closing. It is also recommended you keep the sensors clean of dirt and grime, as these can impact the sensor's performance.

Children and garage doors

Safety experts recommend having talks with children about garage door safety. They stress telling children that the garage door is a powerful and heavy object, and they can be seriously hurt by it.  A number of accidents occur when children play with garage door openers. It is extremely important to keep remote opening units out of the reach of children, and to keep door opening switches high enough off the ground and out of the reach of children.

Regular testing is your friend

Earlier in this article, we stressed the importance of regular testing of the door's safety reversal mechanism. It is equally important to test other features of your garage door opener regularly as well, such as the frame. We also discussed cleaning the reversal mechanism, and this holds true to other parts of the door as well.  Finally, a number of accidents are caused by completely unrelated incidents, such as backing over people or pets. In this case, make sure they are out of the way before you back up. During the winter, make sure no snow or ice is blocking the door.