I read your story on falling TVs yesterday, and I wanted to show you this picture of me, age four. That's when a TV tried to kill me.

I was simply trying to put the remote back on top of our 27" wood console Magnavox television, when I slipped while climbing onto the TV cabinet.

Instead of just falling to the ground, I grabbed the top edge of the Magnavox as I tumbled down to the ground. I hit the ground first, then the TV followed with one of the corners squarely landing on my forehead. The television slid off my head, taking about a quarter of my scalp with it.

The babysitter—my parents were at the movies—described it as "if someone had opened my scalp like they would open a banana peel." I ran around the house screaming in shock, but the babysitter—who later became my mother's best friend—did everything right, kept her calm, and called 911.

One hundred and forty-four stitches later, and enough hospital ice cream to please any 4-year-old boy, I was on my way to a steady recovery. I had some temporary nerve and muscle damage that affected things like my eyebrows, but I was lucky enough to have no long-lasting damage that I'm aware of. I'm obviously incredibly lucky that I've been left unscathed short of a very large scar across my forehead. As you know, there are many other people that haven't been as lucky.

I would love it if you could post my story and my picture in Gizmodo. It would be great if my story can help make other people aware of the significant dangers of untethered CRTs or flat screen TVs.

Thanks Russell. Hopefully, this will make more people aware of this problem.

Sergio, my youngest brother, bumped against the piece of furniture that supported the TV. The heavy CRT fell onto us, in slow motion. I tried to hold it, but it was too heavy for a little kid like me. Fortunately for all of us, my uncle Antolín was there: He jumped from the sofa to hold it himself, struggling to put the cathodic beast back on top of the stand. One second later could have resulted in both my brother and I crushed under that monster.

Many other kids were not that lucky. Three hundred in the United States alone died from 1990 to 2007. According to Gary Smith—director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, and co-author of a recent study on 100 emergency rooms nationwide, published in the Clinical Pediatrics journal—there were 14,700 furniture-related accidents. Of those, half were due to TVs:

Every day, in this country, about 40 young children are rushed to emergency departments with injuries after a heavy piece of furniture has fallen on them. This is not a small problem; it's a common problem, and it's increasing.

A study by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission—spanning from 2000 to 2006—supported his paper: 42,700 injuries and 180 deaths related to appliances and furniture were registered, 87 of those directly related to televisions. Both the Clinical Pediatrics paper and the government study showed dramatic increases over the last few years: 18.8 per 100,000 people in 1990 vs 22.9 per 100,000 people in 2007.

The reason for that increase? Apparently, we have to blame flat TVs. They are not the actual killers, however: The real killers are the CRTs that the flat TVs are replacing. As parents buy new TVs, they move the old CRT giants into kids playrooms. Those are the ones falling, killing or injuring children.

So, if you have kids or know someone who is doing this, make sure that the TVs are fully secured against kids bumping against them. That, or have an superhero uncle available in the room at all times. [NYT]

According to subpoenaed cell phone records "Riccardo Blas Rivas II had been sending text messages to a friend just before the May 23 crash." That crash resulted in the death of 32 year old Tracy Cate.

The incident is incredibly sad, but it may turn into an example of how harshly the courts are willing to punish careless idiots who decide to text while driving. Based on what we're seeing, it may be months, possibly even years, before Rivas' case goes to trial and gets wrapped up, but let's hope the charges stick. Don't wuss out on me now, Florida. [Naples News]

The story: An unmanned, computerized train slowly rolled forward onto a repairman, who unfortunately did not survive. Authorities haven't come to a conclusion, saying it rolled for "unknown reasons," but we'll leave you, excitable readers, to draw your own conclusions. [via Geekologie]

The girl was walking across the street on Tuesday when she dropped her iPod. She went back to grab it in moving traffic and was, unsurprisingly, hit by the approaching pickup truck. She suffered a broken leg, but hey, her iPod is OK! Totally worth it. [WESH via The Daily What]

That's not the truck in the accident, in case you were wondering.

Lawnmowers, with their spinning, ground level blades, are most dangerous to small animals, young children, and feet. Recently, one Mowing Menace trapped a 4-year-old girl's foot under its blades of doom, causing enough damage to require amputation. In fact, she was one of 77,000 people who go to the hospital every year, victims of mowing-related violence.

Clearly, in the epic battle of Man vs. Machine, mowers don't intend to play fair.

A mower in Oregon flipped its rider down an embankment and into a ditch before rolling itself onto some blackberry bushes above the trapped man. The lawn mower's heat actually set the blackberry bushes on fire, and when they gave way, the mower itself tumbled 15-20 feet to rest on top of its owner, trapping him in the ditch. Though the victim wasn't severely burned, the crushing weight of his mower caused enough unspecified injuries to necessitate a helicopter airlift to a nearby hospital.

Another one, at a park in Indiana, was being peacefully driven around the perimeter of a lake when it snagged a wire, flipped and slowly dragged its helpless rider into the water like a conniving, hungry alligator. Though the tractor technically did not devour the 59-year-old John McComas, it did pin him in the shallows of the lake, rendering him unable to move. Thankfully, he managed to keep his head above water and shouted for help, and was rescued soon enough to escape with only mild injuries.

A lawnmower in Florida apparently took offense to its owner doing a little repair work on it, and so shot a spark onto the owner's nearby boat. The spark ignited gas fumes and the boat promptly burst into flames, sending up huge plumes of smoke and the risk of serious fire in the "tinderbox conditions" of that stretch of the Atlantic coastline. The town's fire commissioner, Fred Link, explained with laughable naivete, "It was accidentally started." Sure, Fred, that's what they want you to think.

Lawnmowers don't just act alone, though. They are capable of teaming up with other terrors to dish out even more devastation. In Texas, the mere sound of a lawn mower was enough to enrage a nearby swarm of killer Africanized bees. That's right, Africanized bees, the ones the hysterical news media alerted your attention to back in 1999. The killer bees, responding to the mower's calls, attacked nearby residents, stinging two bystanders and two firemen. None were seriously injured, and another fireman said he "barely managed to avoid being stung," a quote he probably wishes had not appeared in his local paper. The bees were exterminated, but the mower lived to fight another day.

But just like in Battlestar Galactica, some of these appliances have decided to side with humans—defending them instead of terrorizing them. In Croatia, an innocent man was mowing his lawn when suddenly, his mower detonated a live hand grenade, sacrificing its own self in the process. The man escaped uninjured, but still confused as to what a live grenade was doing in his garden.

At first I remember loving the idea. Those PJs were unassuming, but warm. Comforting. The itchy brown fabric was completely tolerable because it offered me spacesuit-like cocoon protection against those cold New England winters.

The gloriously padded feet sported rubber bottoms that provided me with just the right amount of grip for taking hairpin turns at the bottom of the foyer stairs and into the family room. Indeed, where socks would have sent me tumbling into the family's ancient grandfather clock near the front door, these pajamas caught firmly, and allowed me to perform running maneuvers around the house that were the envy of my less fortunate and less pajama-fied best friends. I trusted that clothing absolutely and completely. In hindsight, such naivety was probably my downfall.

You see, I was young. The contraption on the front of these pajamas was alien to me. The zipper. I didn't "get" it or how it managed to take two separate pieces of fabric and join them together. So, my mom had to help me get dressed.

At first, the arrangement was uneventful. Mom would hold up the pajamas with the feet like a NASA technician, and I would jump into them, eager to get it all over with so I could bolt down the stairs and orbit around the house at close to 10 mph. But before that, I would have to turn 180 degrees so mom could lock me in by pulling up the zipper. This is how things went for the first few months of winter. Jump in, turn, zip up, run away. Safe and sound.

But then one day, as I vaulted into those welcoming PJs with the feet, something was different. Perhaps mom had a bad day at the office. Or maybe it was the fact that it gets dark at 4 p.m. in Massachusetts during the winter, and she was depressed. I have no idea. Whatever it was, it had distracted mom to the point where she wasn't taking into account all the variables in the task she was about to perform.

Son in PJs yet? Check.
Turn to face me? Check.
Grasp zipper? Check.
Execute zipper pull? Go for launch.

Missing in that checklist, of course, was any mention of my penis or its location at the time.

Now, before we get to the part that sends roughly 60% of Gizmodo's audience into a pathetic fetal position, a brief aside. Many of you might think calling a mere zipper a "machine" is as big a stretch as any, but to that I say you've definitely never experienced what I, Ben Stiller's character in There's Something About Mary, or millions of other unfortunate men have experienced throughout history since the invention of the blasted zipper. Or you're lying about having a penis.

Whatever your story is, I deliver this aside about "the machines" because, believe me, I'd take a run in with a T-600—flayed skin and personality disorder and all—over another run-in with that zipper any day of the week. Those teeth. That unforgiving gnashing sound as the mechanism slowly grated its way northward toward my junk. The muffled, organic yank the zipper made as it bit into my flesh. The Pinch. The—

Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I seem to have fallen out of my chair.

Anyway, to this day, some 20+ years later, I still subconsciously think of this story when I put on a pair of jeans, or do up a pair of slacks. Button flies are a godsend, in my opinion, and I was forever a changed man after that day. A little more tentative; a little more cautious. Especially with you know what.

Everything works fine now, I assure you, but those feeted pajamas went into the garbage that day so fast the plastic bag melted against the can. My mood at the time was the antithesis of that final scene from Terminator 2. Whereas John Connor wept, my relief at seeing that damned invention heading into oblivion was palpable.

The big bag of ice felt pretty damn good too.

Machines Behaving Deadly: A week exploring the sometimes difficult relationship between man and technology.

The errant text message also sent dozens of passengers to the hospital and closed down one of the busier sections of the Green Line at the Government Center and Park Street stops. The stops have since reopened, and criminal charges are all but set to be filed against the operator, Aiden Quinn, 24, of Attleboro, Mass. Quinn actually admitted to first responders that he was texting his girlfriend at the time of the crash because she wouldn't answer his initial call (which he also made, presumably, while driving a packed subway train).

In related news, Verizon is on board with a general ban on texting while driving, and Boston just instituted one of those "you mean it wasn't in place already?!" bans on cellphones for all T operators. The ban does not apply to popcorn. [AP, NYT, Channel 5 Boston]

On March 18, Chief Wilson was at a red light when he took his foot off the brake to check his e-mail and news updates on his BlackBerry, causing his unmarked police car to move forward and rear-end the vehicle in front of him. It is reported that soon after, Chief Wilson, who was given a verbal reprimand but not a ticket, Twittered declared that he was "mortified" at the situation. [APP via Topix. Image courtesy of Oxford Mail.]

Minutes before crashing his train head-on into another train, he texted "I'm gonna do all the radio talkin' ... ur gonna run the locomotive & I'm gonna tell u how to do it" to a teenage rail enthusiast. He had multiple relationships with teenagers who were interested in railroads, and had let one of them into the locomotive cab within a week of the accident. He was so into talking to these kids that he had sent a whopping 43 texts and made four phone calls the day of the crash.

The moral of the story? If you're driving a train, pay attention, please. [SF Gate]

Luckily, fellow astronaut Stephen Bowen was nearby to help afterwards, sharing his tools with Stefanyshyn-Piper. Flight controllers are currently trying to track its location in orbit and determine its impact on the next three spacewalks. "Oh, great"? Really? Since E.T. is back home now, I suppose he can call the space station to find out what's up, track down the bag, and personally hand-deliver it to Stefanyshyn-Piper. Only she'll be like, "Holy mother *bleep* what the *bleep* *bleep* Reeses' *bleep* *bleep* Pieces *bleep*!!" [Associated Press]

Bonus tip: This rule also applies for transporting cadavers, manure and boxed sets of Friends. – Mark Wilson

Truck Spills 40 Tons of Cow Intestine [yahoonews]

Vallejo man's cell phone ignites in pocket, causing serious burns [SFGate.com]

Image via Hardware Secrets

Here is the confusing part—it can only record front accidents, but if it mounts on the windshield there is a very good chance it would go flying upon impact because of that little property known as inertia. Oh well, maybe one out of a hundred accidents the RoadBox could place the blame on another person and not your overly aggressive driving. – Travis Hudson

RoadBox Accident Recorder [OhGizmo!]

Woman's Arm Severed In Car Accident [WLEXTV]