Is it true.........?!
Answers: ......that up to four people die year due to vending machines falling on them? (when they shake them)
That would be an upsetting way to die. Your hoping to get a free cola or chocolate bar and you get squished. :(
Attempting to obtain a free drink by rocking the machine back and forth can result in serious personal injury or death! An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Nov. 11, 1988, p. 2697) documents 15 cases in which men trying to get a can out of the machine were crushed. 3 died, the other 12 required hospitalization for injuries such as fractures of the skull, toe, ankle, tibia, femur, and pelvis; intercerebral bleeding; knee contusion; and one punctured bladder. The article states that because the sodas are located in the upper half of the machine (so that they can fall into the dispensing slot), the center of gravity of the machine is abnormally high and the machine will fall after it has been tipped only 20 degrees, a deceptively small angle. A large, fully loaded machine can weigh in excess of 1000 pounds. I strongly advocate the policy whereby all Juice Machines must display the label "WARNING: Tipping this machine or any other unstable object weighing in excess of 1000 pounds onto yourself can result in serious bladder injury or death."
Vending machines kill, sharks don't, according to a July 4, 2003 Reuters headline. The article quotes an L.A. lifeguard who asserts that in spite of the ubiquitous fear of shark attacks in this country, 'more people are killed in the United States each year by vending machines,' which smacks of an urban legend but probably isn't.
I say "probably isn't" because statistics relating to vending machine deaths aren't as easy to come by as data on shark attack fatalities, so it's difficult to draw a direct comparison. But if we look at 1995, for example — the most recent year for which I was able to find an accounting of deaths due to vending machine tipovers — two people died as a result of being crushed by falling soda machines in the U.S., as compared to zero shark-related deaths in the same twelve-month period.
Moreover, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission there were 37 known vending machine fatalities between 1978 and 1995, for an average of 2.18 deaths per year. Over the past decade there were a total of six recorded shark attack fatalities in the U.S., for an average of .6 deaths per year. Ergo, barring a drastic reduction in the frequency of vending machine accidents since 1995, vending machines are indeed more deadly than sharks by a factor of almost four
yES. iS TRUE
