Golden Tee Golf - Major Injury Hazard

Thanks to TheWhig.com for their local news report discussing the massive popularity of U.S. arcade game Golden Tee Golf. According to the piece, "Since Golden Tee was released in 1996, at least 100,000 machines have popped up in bars and restaurants across North America." Unsurprisingly, the game developers suggest: "I think you'll find many players who say they're better after three or four beers." But drinking and golfing leads to danger, since the control method is "..a track ball that is half submerged in the machine.. the faster the ball spins, the further the shot flies. Sometimes, eager golfers put a little too much oomph on their drives. The Brass, a popular Golden Tee hangout on Princess Street, has had three players accidentally smash their hands through the video screens on both of the bar's machines."

Actually

[M3wThr33]

After a couple heinekens, my friend was able to full combo World Tour on DDR Extreme.
(In non-ddr talk: While drunk, he never missed a single one of 2500 steps in 12 minutes)

Golden Tee Injuries

[Hedonist123]

I think it's pretty well known that you can do damage to yourself playing golden tee. About ten minutes of hammering that ball on the drives will give almost anyone a wicked bruise. Luckily, thanks to many many many hours of bar time I've built up those rugged golden tee hands. But, I digress, the machines all have a speel written on them about inuries. I think that focuses on loose screws in the ball itself though, not punching through the screen (which I think I've been close to doing). I've always wondered if that warning is enough insurance for them. Could you sue after hurting yourself playing drunk golden tee? Hed.

I've never understood why...

[still_sick]

...People insist on smashing the thing every time. All the people I know play like that and I just don't get it. For fuck sake's people, just use one higher club and give it nice solid but relaxed hit - you'll go just as far as the lower club and a smasher. ... Of course knowing the people I play with, I suspect that half of it is just to prove they can get x distance out of y club, but come on... Other than driving on a really far hole there's no reason to kill it.

Re:Golden Tee Injuries

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly question. Of course you can sue.

Whether you can actually win the lawsuit is the question.

I'm of the opinion that the safest product in the world can be unsafe, all it takes is a drunkhas abusing it long enough.

If I drunkenly stumble into the fence surrounding your hard and impale myself on part of it, does that mean you should be liable for my poor judgement? I know a friend of a friend who won a very similar lawsuit under similar circumstances, and it only served to drop my opinion of that slacker hippy another notch. God knows what chemical cocktail was flowing through his veins at the time, I know he didn't even remember.

BTW, I read the article - and frankly there was only half a paragraph about injuries. So WTF is up with this Slashdot headline?! Half wondering if it was submitted by some jackass who's talking to a lawyer right now...

FWIW, the carriage bolts that were a problem on very old cabinets are literally gone as of a couple years ago, you'll only see them on non-tournament non-league (in other words old, outdated) cabinets. Every year IT ships out a new control panel as part of the upgrade kit, they switched to one with submerged (under the panel) carriage bolts a WHILE ago.