Safety Warning

[Lin]

I just returned from buying a couple of bungee cords from Home Depot.  There are 13 warnings about bungee cord use on the plastic wrapper (14 if you count the one about suffocating from the plastic bag they came in).  Anyway, I wanted everyone to be aware that, "Protective eyewear (that meets or exceeds ANSI safety standard X87.1) should be worn when stretching or releasing bungee cords."  Also, if you are using bungee cords as a tie down while traveling, you are supposed to stop and inspect the cord every 25 miles.  Let's not make this hobby more dangerous than it inherently is.

[MARKMC7]

every 25 miles. OMG, how would you make a cross country trip like that.

Mark

[white-eagle]

home depot needs to carry better cords.  25 miles?  i've bought some cheap cords and some expensive ones, but never any that i thought needed checking every 25 mi.

but i also don't tie much outside stuff down.  most of the bungie cord is to maintain it in the van we pull or the bays on the bus.

[Barn Owl]

All joking aside I have been hit in the face hard with a bungee cord. It scared me enough to always wear eye protection, but a 25 mile check sounds more like lawyer speak.

[artvonne]

  A lot of the stuff we buy is increasingly Chinese. When it was Taiwanese it was good stuff, and still is, and earlier Chinese wasnt too bad (not way back early, but post 1990's early), but some of it now is real garbage. I have seen some bungees simply snap when stretching, or pull the hook through. They are junk. You cant even buy decent ratchet straps anymore, all chinese junk and they want big bucks for it. Need to re-learn all those Navy knots. But then your stuck using Chinese rope.

[JohnEd]

I am with Barn Owl.  I had one come loose and unwrap around a catamaran hull.  It smacked me in the right temple and I am sure I was out for a second or two.  A vicious blow.  Remember me?  The guy with one eye?  I don't think safety glasses would have prevented serious injury.  I wore glasses back then for the safety glass factor.  BE CAREFUL and learn from our dismal experiences as well as our triumphs.

Please

[Tony LEE]

All joking aside I have been hit in the face hard with a bungee cord. It scared me enough to always wear eye protection, but a 25 mile check sounds more like lawyer speak.

Had a boss who lost an eye stretching a cord over luggage on a roof rack.

Some of the cords here have a loose PVC tube over the cord to limit the rebound. Was supposed to be on all cords but never seemed to happen

[bevans6]

A friend of mine, seriously, had a bad accident with a bungee cord.  It slipped, sprang back and hit him in his chest and caused a collapsed lung, he  had to go to hospital and it was touch and go.  Weird but true. 

Brian

[Gary LaBombard]

Lin,
Great thought here also lin and everyone.  Bungee cords can be quite dangerous as pointed out.  I cringe every time I have to stretch one out and the only way I found that gives me a little, I mean little security is when stretching I use my left hand further out away from the side of my body and not going toward my face to do the actual pulling.  I place my left hand about 3 feet above the right hand and let the right hand finish stretching the bungee cord to connect the end of the bungee cord to what ever it is to connect to.  The left hand will add a little protection and may get hit if a cord lets loose from the connection point on the other end but this method is not guaranteed if you overstretch etc. 

Bungee cords are very dangerous, if possible always use two of them when traveling and they are exposed to weather and wind etc.  Any place you put one bungee cord, put two. I always double up everything as you notice, my bus framing etc., just everything.  You double the protection of your bungee and stopping every 25 miles should not be a factor needed.  Now checking every time you stop to rest or fuel up, that would suffice.  But, as usual we are all responsible for our actions, try to take precautions when connecting them up and use more bungee cords than you think you need for added security.

I used 4 new very strong ratchet straps to secure the spare 8V71 motor we went to get in Illinois.  I thought, man this baby will never move after securing her as tight as I could with these new nylon 2" ratchet straps. We traveled several hundred miles to BK's first rally in TN and after we arrived at BK's I noticed the straps were still tight still but the motor had shifted up about 5-6 inches from where we place her on the trailer & secured the motor there.

At BK's We hooked a cable to a truck and pulled the motor back over the center of gravity on the trailer, over the wheels to displace the weight evenly, then I immediately got pieces of wood and using BK's equipment I placed these wood strips & secured them to the trailer wooden deck with very long wood screws on all four sides of my motor to secured the motor in place.  The rest of the trip was just great and worry free.  Just imagine, this baby getting loose on the interstate, OH my, I would probably ended up in a cell with a child molester etc.!!!

The moral of this post as explained by several above me, is use care in securing your loads, using bungee cords, ratchet straps you think will never stretch etc.  When you are moving about 60+ miles per hour and one of these type straps comes undone, disaster could surely happen.  When putting them on in the first place, especially the bungee cords, use as much extreme care as you can and just don't stretch it out in a rip as you face will surely become the stopping target and safety glasses may help but who wants to find this out?  Double up, double up, double up and plan for a safe trip. 

Man, I do make long post eh?
"Garylee"

[artvonne]

I used 4 new very strong ratchet straps to secure the spare 8V71 motor we went to get in Illinois.  I thought, man this baby will never move after securing her as tight as I could with these new nylon 2" ratchet straps. We traveled several hundred miles to BK's first rally in TN and after we arrived at BK's I noticed the straps were still tight still but the motor had shifted up about 5-6 inches from where we place her on the trailer & secured the motor there.

   A guy bought an airplane and hauled it home in an enclosed trailer. Thinking he had it well secured, he never looked at it on his 1000 mile trip home. IIRC he had his wife and neighbors watching when he opened up the trailer to show them his new machine, only to find it had destroyed itself. It had come untied, and as the fuselage rolled back and forth, it ran over the wings, smashed the tail, in other words, it did incredible damage. I dont know if its true, but there are others like it that are true.

  Myself, I see those straps stretch quite a bit at first, after each application. They need to be checked for tension after the first few miles, and at intervals along the way (and yes, not the first 25 miles, but the first 5, then 10, then 25, and you can extend distance as you gain confidence your stuff isnt loosening up), or the thing you have tied down can start moving around and can possibly break free. Cars seem the best at loosening up and rolling around. And thats where cribbing, like you used to block your engine from moving, are really good ideas.

[Oonrahnjay]

Back when I was a useful, productive citizen, I worked on "Roll-On/Roll-Off" car transport ships frequently.  If one of those ships hits a big storm and one car comes loose, there's nothing that they can do about it.  They'll go for the 2-3 days it takes to get out of the storm hearing "BANG ....... BANG ...... BANG" down below every 12-14 seconds. What they REALLY don't want to have happen is for a car to go through the plate of the hull. 

And the loose car and all the cars around it get pounded.  I have seen a Ferrari ine the port of Baltimore that was the size of a refrigerator.  And my boss had run the service school at Jaguar for a while.  He got a call -- "we have seven cars that were damaged on a boat when one came loose -- come take any parts you need for service school students to practice taking apart."  He went to the port and could not find any major components that were useful; all the engine blocks were cracked, the transmissions were smashed, the rear axles splintered.   Every major part was wrecked on all seven vehicles.  He said that you couldn't tell that they were Jaguars except that you could recognize the paint color on some.