The so-called Health and Safety brigade in the UK have, after two years of study costing in the region of £250,000, actually discovered a hitherto unknown danger to families, particularly children and teenagers. How this glaring danger has escaped everyone’s attention is baffling, but it has.
It could, just possibly, be due to the fact that there has never, to date, been such an accident recorded, anywhere.
But just imagine, if a teenager were, for some bizarre reason, to run the sixty feet down a bowling alley and, having reached the end, decided to sit under the machine and help set up the pins….well, the carnage. The automatic pinsetting has only been around since 1946, so one could quite expect teenagers to be unaware of this new aspect of the sport.
The Healthy and Safety officers actually considered the introduction of barriers across the bowling lanes until it was realised that it might possibly be necessary for bowlers to see what they are aiming at. That called for a ‘plan B’, photoelectric beams to stop the machinery if anyone goes near it.
In addition, staff at bowling alleys need to wear earmuffs to mask the noise of the balls hitting the pins.
By far the best solution would be to remove the machinery and return to the days of a human pinsetter (helps unemployment), have one single polystyrene pin three feet wide (reduces the expectation of failure and boosts the confidence of players), shag pile carpet to replace the wooden surfacing in the alley and a fluffy woollen ball (safe and does away with the need for earmuffs).