Garage door is most likely the largest moving object in your home. Normally, it is used everyday and can be a potentially dangerous, especially for small kids. Therefore, it needs attention. Typically June is the Garage Safety Month but it doesn’t means that you dedicate only one month to the topic. You have to take care of your garage door because they wear out too.

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 1993 has initiated rules on product safety. CPSC requires that all garage door openers have an external entrapment protection system.  This typically is some electronic eye or sensor that will trigger the door to brake and reverse itself before it hits anything detected in its path.

It prevents accidental entrapment, injury or death.

Many older garage doors are quaint fixtures providing good architectural form, but their function may allow them to reverse only after a collision — and that can be quite a hard crash — or they don't reverse at all. If your garage door is more than 10 years old, consider upgrading, says the CPSC, and replace pre-1982 garage door openers that do not reverse.

The mandate for the improved safety feature in current standards has significantly reduced personal injury and property damage so much so that in 2001 the standard was extended to include automated security gates that are increasingly common at the entrances of multifamily housing communities.

An optional safety feature includes a constant contact control button which requires a person to hold in or onto the control button continuously for the garage door to close completely. If the button is released before the door closes, the door reverses and opens to the highest position. The remote control transmitter will not close the door with this option. However, the hands-on option allows — or forces the operator to see — that the door is closed with no one in danger of collision or entrapment and that no one unwanted has ventured inside.

The mandate also calls for manufacturers to include a sticker warning consumers of the potential entrapment hazard. The sticker is to be placed near the wall-mounted control button.

As an added precaution, you should mount the keypad wall control out of children's reach — at least five feet from the floor — and in a location where users can clearly see the moving door.

CPSC also says you should also test your garage door each month. Your owner's manual or manufacturer can provide you with the testing procedure specific to your garage door make and model. It will also provide safe operating times, maintenance you can perform emergency procedures and other safety tips.