THERE is a danger lurking in garages across the country, and a Taranaki man says it is “pure chance” that no lives have yet been lost.
New Plymouth geophysicist Stephen Morice and his three children had a near miss this year when a spring on their tilt garage door snapped and shot across the room about half a metre from their heads.
And the garage door technician who came to repair it said it was not a freak occurrence. “His comment was, and I’ll always remember those words: ‘Those springs go all the time, and they’re lethal,’ ” Mr Morice said.
The spring shot across the garage and glanced off his wife’s car before ricocheting off the opposite wall.
The springs weigh 1.3 kilograms each and are 30 centimetres long.
Based on information from Spring Specialists in Auckland, Mr Morice worked out that each spring could store 30 per cent more power than a .22 rifle.
“It could’ve been fatal. It’s pure chance that one of my children wasn’t killed.”
Mr Morice said it cost $500 to repair the paint job on his car, but this was an insignificant price when he considered how close the spring came to his children.
“There must be tens of thousands of these doors in the country . garage door repair