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By Kathy Hunt
Mar 11, 2025
Throughout history, safety and security have been common concerns in society. Yet sometimes, something put in place to protect people from harm has actually contributed to injuries and even fatalities. Such at times has been the case with manual and automatic fence gates. Created to safeguard property and people from trespassing, theft, physical damage, and other offenses while still affording access, fence gates can malfunction and injure passersby or those operating them. Because gates can weigh as much as 1,100 pounds, life-threatening injuries and fatalities are sometimes the outcomes of these accidents.
In July 2024, California’s Department of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) released an evaluation of horizontal sliding gates that included an accident history. From 1990 to 2024, 47 work-related accidents in California resulted from fence gates derailing and falling. Of that number, 35 workers sustained injuries ranging from pelvis, leg, rib, arm, and skull fractures to spinal injuries, punctured lungs, and internal bleeding. Sadly, the remaining 12 individuals did not survive.
Because the cause of death is typically recorded as cerebral hemorrhage, skull fracture, or cardiac arrest, tracking these fatalities is challenging. Occasionally, though, gate-related deaths make national and international headlines. This happened in 2020, when Ugandan human rights activist Esther Nakajjigo died on her honeymoon in Utah’s Arches National Park after wind gusts caused a fence gate to slice through her vehicle. Her family filed a wrongful death claim against the park and were eventually awarded damages.
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In 2023, a 9-year-old girl in Tuscon, Arizona, died after a rolling gate at Tuscon’s Centennial Elementary School fell on her as she attempted to help close the gate. A similar tragedy claimed the life of 7-year-old Alex Quanbeck in Marin County, California, in December 2019. Alex had been playing football with his friends at recess, and to stop the ball from rolling away, he had attempted to close the schoolyard gate. The massive horizontal sliding gate collapsed on him, resulting in his death.
To improve school safety through education and advocacy, Alex’s parents, Eric and Dayna Quanbeck, created the nonprofit Hummingbird Alliance. Founded in Alex’s memory, the organization’s goals include creating “a baseline of safety standards for all institutions we entrust with our children.”
“What I tell people is that we’ve identified a problem at a national level — gates are everywhere,” Eric Quanbeck says. “You think about why the fence and gate were built at my son’s school. It was in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. This is a safety device that gives people peace of mind. While it’s necessary to put fences and gates up, you have to be aware of the dangers that they present. Gates move, either manually or automatically with an arm, and if there’s not a proper safety mechanism, you can be putting a potentially fatal product in your home, school, or business.”
In November 2024, the Hummingbird Alliance saw a major advancement in its efforts with the introduction of the Alex Gate Safety Act. Sponsored by U.S. Representatives Jared Huffman (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT), the act aims to prevent accidents from what are essentially gates that are not functioning properly. Several organizations, including ASTM International, are working with the Hummingbird Alliance and the sponsors of the Alex Gate Safety Act to ensure that gate safety is a priority for everyone.
The safety bill instructs the Consumer Protection Safety Commission (CPSC) to run an education and awareness campaign alerting the public and fence industry to the dangers associated with gates. The campaign also details ways to prevent accidents. It directs the CPSC to make certain that new gates adhere to three ASTM standards. Published by ASTM’s subcommittee on gates (F14.15), part of the committee on fences (F14), they are: the standard specification for automated vehicular gate construction (F2200); the standard specification for industrial and commercial steel swing gates (F900); and the standard specification for industrial and commercial horizontal slide gates (F1184).
Upon learning of its inclusion in the bill, ASTM’s gates subcommittee promptly set out to ensure that its standards reflected the new safety requirements. Revision was a straightforward process, especially since the standard specification for horizontal slide gates (F1184) had already been updated in late 2023.
“For F1184, we tried to stick with a standard that was well-received and created safer environments,” says F14 member Catherine Mills-Reynolds. “This was F2200. Barring those things related specifically to electric gate operators (F1184 only applies to manual gates), all of F2200’s best practices were incorporated into F1184. These are things that the industry was familiar with from F2200, which made the changes an easy addition for the AFA [American Fence Association] to support. It wasn’t a foreign concept for us or out of the blue.”
Mills-Reynolds is also the director of government relations and industry standards for the AFA. The organization promotes professionalism, ethics, and the education and certification of members of the fence industry.
Revisions to the standard specification for swing gates (F900) passed balloting in December 2024. The standards now reflect the changes set forth in the Alex Gate Safety Act.
“The automated gate standard was used as a template for updating the other two standards. A lot of the requirements of those three standards are harmonized,” says Dave Monsour, technical director at the Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association (DASMA) and a member of ASTM’s subcommittee on the performance of windows, doors, skylights, and curtain walls (E06.51). “Everyone who deals with gates should know about F2200. It offers real protections and frankly, people are in danger without it.”
The automated vehicular gate standard (F2200) covers horizontal slide gates; horizontal swing gates; vertical lift gates; vertical pivot gates; overhead pivot gates; and horizontal bifold gates. It includes safety requirements for 45-degree fall-over protection, protrusions that could hurt someone, and positive stops. Positive stops are positioned at the top or bottom of a gate and guarantee that a gate stops in the correct spot when opening and closing. If a gate swings out beyond the designated stopping point, it could damage itself, the hinges, the latch, or the person operating the gate. These provisions are applicable to manual gates as well.
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Standards for gates can help reduce the dangers.
“If a gate does not abide by these standards and dislodges from its supports and strikes someone, whether it’s electric or manual, the risk of death or severe injury is the same,” Mills-Reynolds says. “If there’s a gate, no matter how it opens, there’s a risk. We’re making these changes so that, if a gate falls, there’s a stop preventing it from falling to the ground.”
Quanbeck stresses the importance of these voluntary standards becoming part of day-to-day practice. “Most people in the industry are aware of and probably follow ASTM’s standards,” he says. “The question is: How do you take it to the next level, so that it’s no longer a voluntary option?”
Often, additional safety requirements are associated with incurring cost and inconvenience to upgrade and meet the new conditions. For gates, this is not the case. Take, for instance, fall-stop posts for manual slide gates. These cost as little as $50 to purchase and install. Cemented into the ground or welded onto the gate, fall stops ensure that a detached gate doesn’t fall more than 45 degrees from the vertical plane. If a gate becomes detached, it will hit the post and stop moving before it can strike someone.
“Anything that can roll can fall,” Quanbeck says. “Think about your sliding closet door and how it could become decoupled and come off the track. You can’t prevent decoupling on gates, but you can install a fall-stop device so that the gate doesn’t fall from the fence and cause a tragedy.”
A gate-stop is another safety measure. Referred to as a positive stop in the standard, this is a small piece of metal either in bracket form or welded to the end of the gate. Mills-Reynolds explains that, if a gate is sliding down a hill and becomes loose, when it slides, it hits that metal piece and doesn’t overshoot and come off the railing.
In addition to these safety features, there are gatekeepers, known colloquially as “duck bills” or “hold backs.” A gatekeeper is a mechanical device for securing the free end of a gate when it’s in a fully open position. It holds the gate onto the post so that it can’t move on its own.
With a gatekeeper in place, a gate won’t swing violently or erratically when a gust of wind blows, which is what occurred in Arches National Park. Ultimately, it stops the gate from hitting and injuring someone.
Gate-safety loops or chains provide anti-drop protection. When fitted onto the hinge side of a swing gate, this item acts as a secondary reinforcement, preventing the gate from falling more than a foot if it has separated from a hinge. These stainless-steel loops and chains can be purchased for as little as $20. They and gatekeepers are part of F900’s specifications for industrial and commercial steel swing gates.
Ben Shirley, chair of the committee on fences and director of marketing and training at Ameristar Perimeter Security USA Inc., points out that some of these items can be created in a shop for minimal costs. In comparison to the price of a gate, they are inexpensive fixes. “When we’re talking about child safety, I don’t know anyone who is going to push back against these safeguards,” he says.
A 2001 study by the CPSC indicated that between 1990 and 2000, more than 25,000 Americans were injured by automatic gates. “Electric gates have been deadly and have caused entrapment deaths. This is why F2200 underwent its first round of changes back in 2002,” Mills-Reynolds says. “At the time, UL [Underwriters Laboratories] and others in the industry got involved to increase safety awareness around these gates.”
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Automated gates and access control are constantly changing. So, too, are the standards. “Each time the subcommittee meets, they assess what issues they’ve seen and what they need to change to make gates safer,” Shirley says. As an example, he cites the layer of mesh added roughly five years ago to stop children’s hands from getting caught in gates. In the past three years, the mesh height has increased from four to six feet.
Recognizing F2200’s wide-reaching impact, ASTM has submitted the standard for inclusion in the International Code Council’s (ICC) code on gates. The acceptance process is estimated to be two years.
Working with ASTM, DASMA, and others, the Hummingbird Alliance is submitting a petition to the ICC to adopt many attributes of the Alex Gate Safety Act. “The benefit is that if it does get adopted and implemented, then that is promulgated through all 50 states and makes its way into the building code across the country,” Quanbeck says.
Regarding the ICC adopting F2200 and other aspects of the act, Monsour says, “I hope this will result in a greater awareness of the important provisions to promote safety in the installation of automated and manual gates and, ultimately, prevent injuries and save lives.”
Embracing existing ASTM standards has helped the fence industry elevate gate-safety awareness and increase its levels of professionalism and expertise. It has also enabled the industry to become more involved in the creation, revision, and use of ASTM standards.
“As people who are ‘boots on the ground,’ doing the installations of fences, we are often the best ones to know what the problems are and how to improve on them,” Mills-Reynolds says. “By getting involved with the ASTM process, we have our voices heard and we make sure that the industry is operating to the highest standard, which is what ASTM publishes and pursues.”
She notes that the AFA makes ASTM standards part of its core education programming for fence installers and code-enforcement officials, including the American Association of Code Officials. Last year, the organization held a three-day, gate-safety summit on ASTM’s F2200, F900, and F1184 standards.
For additional information about ASTM’s subcommittee on gates, its gate standards, or the Alex Gate Safety Act, please contact F14 staff manager Jamie Huffnagle at jhuffnagle@astm.org. ●
Kathy Hunt is a U.S. East Coast-based journalist.
March / April 2025
