>I have owned several mules and had owned four at the time I had my mule
>accident. This accident happened when in a turn the left front wheel folded
>under and pitched it over, no wild stunts sometimes accidents just happen. I
>agree that the mules have got an undeserved bad rap as did the M151, most of
>these accidents happen from abuse and negligent use.
I agree with George and David. MULEs are not inherently "dangerous" or
"unsafe", however that doesn't mean they are without their safety
concerns EVEN for a skilled operator. Because of its design (seating
arrangement, lightness, unbalanced weight when empty, no limited slip
differential and 4 wheel steering all come to mind) it has its problem
areas when the operator runs into something unexpected. Most of the
accidents I have read about appear to have been made far more serious
than they should have been because of these shortcomings. I know my
accident was.
The fact is that anybody can be hurt or killed while operating ANYTHING.
Skill has a lot to do with it, but so does luck or a tiny slip in
judgment at just the wrong time. Someone who has had no accidents with a
given device is either very skilled and a little lucky, slightly skilled
and VERY lucky, or something in between. But luck is always a part of
it. The slimmer the margin for error the more important skill and luck
become. The MULE is such a vehicle, but so are many others (motorcycles
and snowmobiles come to mind in particular).
As I said in an earlier post, the MULE can get an operator into
situations (potentially dangerous ones) which no other vehicle can.
Therefore, no matter how skilled or safety conscious the operator might
be with other vehicles, there is a learning curve for such situations.
The more of these situations the operator experiences successfully, the
more skilled and less lucky he becomes. But things can still go wrong
and when they do... sometimes even the smallest thing can result in a
rather nasty accident. Like hitting a stake post the wrong way.
In theory any two vehicles should have the same rate of accidents,
resulting in roughly the same injuries, if they are inherently as safe to
operate as each other. If the MULE was as safe to operate as even a
M38A1 or M151 there would be dozens more on this list with horror stories
to tell. But as far as I can see, MULE owners have more than their fair
share to relate disproportionate to their numbers. So unless MULE owners
are disproportionally worse operators than other 4 wheeled vehicle
owners...
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 06 2002 - 11:49:24 PST