The tragedy of two young girls crushed in electronic gate accidents has renewed the debate that there cannot be any compromise about safety.
The view that safety has always got to be first, foremost and forever has been renewed by NAPIT, a 6,500-strong group of professionals involved in the electrical, ventilation, plumbing and heating industries in England and Wales.
Their call for a competency check from allied trades followed the death of six-year-old Semelia Campbell as she played hide and seek with her best friend close to her home in a gated development near Manchester Citys former Maine Road football ground, a tragedy that was echoed five days later and 200 miles away at Bridgend in south Wales where five-year-old Polish girl Karolina Golabek became caught in sliding automatic gates outside a block of flats.
Police and Health and Safety Executive officials are investigating any links between the two separate incidents, but NAPIT says that legal safeguards for these types of gates are already law throughout Europe.
NAPITs chief executive John Andrews said that such gates should feature safety edges, torque limitation or light curtains -- not only photocells -- and that the electronics need to be a certified cat 3 system.
Every automatic gate without these features was illegal said Mr. Andrews, adding that the installation had also to test the safety features before every movement ensuring that maximum impact forces were limited as well to prevent a repeat of such tragedies.
Mr. Andrews safety calls were underscored by John Birkett, of the Automatic Entrance Systems Installers Federation, who said: Each of these types of gates will have safety features which should make them stop and back off when they meet resistance.
It is vital these gates are properly serviced.
