All of the above umpire's chairs suffer a common design fault: the
'ladder-angle' is too steep!
This makes it awkward and even dangerous to climb into or out of the
chair.
Notice that the chair on the right has a sandbag draped over
the rung at the back to help prevent the chair from toppling over when
a person is climbing into it. This particular chair design
was used at the World Masters Games in Sydney in 2009. During
these games an accident occurred wherein an umpire had a nasty fall
whilst attempting to climb into the chair. The steep angle of
the chair was the main factor contributing to this accident.
I personally witnessed this mishap and I vowed that I would post
drawings for an umpire's chair in the hope that manufacturers might
refer here before repeating the bad design of chairs such as those
shown above.
The ladder-angle in my drawings is 77 degrees, but if I was doing the
drawings again I would modify this to 75 degrees. (Incidentally the
recommended angle for ladders is 1 in 4 which is 76 degrees).
Below are links to my drawings.
This page
last updated 21 April 2011. Author: Alan Bottomley